MICT710: Analyzing the Ethics of Snowden's NSA Data Leak Case

This report delves into the ethical complexities surrounding Edward Snowden's leak of National Security Agency (NSA) data, employing the Doing Ethics Technique (DET) to dissect the case. It identifies the key events, facts, and ethical issues, including Snowden's actions and their implications for individual privacy and national security. The analysis considers the perspectives of affected parties, from the U.S. government to American citizens, and evaluates potential actions to address the ethical dilemmas. The report explores the balance between security and privacy, ultimately offering recommendations for safeguarding data while upholding ethical standards. Desklib provides access to a wide range of solved assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Ethics and Professional Practice: Edward Snowden’s information reveal of National Security
Agency (NSA)
Name of the student:
Name of the university:

1ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Executive summary
This essence of this report is based on the case scenario of Edward Snowden’s information
reveal on National Security Agency (NSA). The ethical dilemma associated to it and ICT
protection mechanisms those are to be adopted for protection data in such situation are also
reflected. In order to analyze this case scenario the concept of Doing Ethics Technique (DET) is
used.

2ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Q1. What's going on?...................................................................................................................3
Q2. What are the facts?................................................................................................................4
Q3. What are the issues?..............................................................................................................5
Q4. Who is affected?...................................................................................................................6
Q5. What are the ethical issues and implications?......................................................................7
Q6. What can be done about it?...................................................................................................7
Q7. What are the options?...........................................................................................................8
Q8. Which option is best - and why?.........................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

3ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Introduction
This report depicts the role of ethical consideration in order to demonstrate the
understandings on various ethical analysis methods and ICT cases as well. This report focuses
on Edward Snowden case, which took place on June 2013. Edward Snowden was the employee
of National Security Agency’s defence contractors Booz Allen Hamilton (Isin and Ruppert,
2017). All the classified information of the United States History was leaked in that incident.
It was one of the major ICT data leakage incidents. Based on this case study the situation
that actually took place was elaborated in the below section. After that, the facts of the ethical
dilemma and associated issues with the incident were elaborated. Not only this but also the
people who were affected and the ethical issues and implications are also illustrated in this
report. Besides this, after the identification of the issues it is also found that some major steps
can be taken to resolve these ethical problems. A set of recommendations and among them the
most suitable solution is suggested to mitigate the highlighted issue of the case situation.
Q1. What's going on?
According to the case of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency’s data leakage it
is found that, the individual who was mainly responsible to leak the united State’s history was
Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden was a professional former technical assistant in CIA and
was working as a defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Including the Booz Allen Hamilton,
Dell he was also been working for the National Security Agency from the past four years (von
Solms and van Heerden 2015). He used to attend many interviews for the newspapers but never
disclosed his identity. However, he was not intentionally hiding his identity till then when he
realized that, he needs to disclose many secret documents in front of the public. He went down to

4ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
the history of United States and besides Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg he became one of
the most well known whistleblower of America (Weinstein et al. 2015). His responsibility was
to handle large set of secret data of National Security Agency, secretive organization. After
disclosing all the secret data of National Security Agency he realized that, he has to suffer a lot
for his action undertook. Though he had huge expectation from the secret law federation,
executive power those are irresistible and unequal pardon. However, he always said that he does
not want to coke under the media spotlight. He was sure about that media is interested in political
debates but still he was hopeful about the excursion that it will not forward other consideration
from the substance of his secret exposures (Friedman 2015). He needed to emphasis the facts on
the records and the verbal argument which he was trusting to be trigged among the people
around the world about what the world where they are living.
Q2. What are the facts?
The scandal of National Security Agency’s data leakage broke in the year of 2013, at the
early phase of June, after the Guardian daily paper revealed the US National Security Agency
(NSA) was gathering the phone records of a million number of Americans citizens for pointing
out terrorists (Crampton 2015). The newspaper revealed that the secret court count order was
directing the telecommunications organizations Verizon to pass all the phone information to the
National Security Agency on a daily basis.
The published report was followed by both the Washington Post and Guardian
newspapers (Harris 2016). It implies that that National Security Agency tapped over nine web
firm’s internet servers, in addition to Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo etc to track online
correspondence in a surveillance program organized with the name of Prism. GCHQ, one of the
famous electronic spying organizations of Britain blamed all of them for stealing data of the

5ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
online organizations through Prism (Hays 2015). After that, the Guardian exposed that, the
Edward Snowden, the CIA former technical assistant rather investigator was behind the data
leakages about the United States and United Kingdom’s surveillance programs (Torres 2015). He
was also charged in stealing intellectual property in terms of United State’s government property,
unauthenticated communication regarding national defence information data and stubborn
communication for characterizing intelligence communication. At the end of the paper they ahs
also revealed that they got all these information from the former technical assistant Edward
Snowden.
It also revealed that the phone number and other credentials those are collected by the
program were stored for 30 days and then shifted for details analysis. Not only were these but
also over 200 fiber optic cables used for tapping the connections (Branum and Charteris-Black
2015). The surveillance programmed developed by them had the ability to monitor more than
600 million of communication details every day. Not only this but also he reveled that National
Security Agency had spread their surveillance program worldwide and hack more than 61,000
connections (Nolan 2017). In an interview for South china Morning post he said that the hacking
operations were done in mainland china and Hong Kong also.
Q3. What are the issues?
The steps taken by Edward Snowden are interpreted to check whether it was right or
wrong under the consideration of all personal reasoning and evidential circumstances. This
particular case was under ethical quandary at the preliminary stage. As the issues were become
accustomed to the affected people the government start trying to understand the actual picture of
humanity, morality quality for Edward Snowden’s situation (von Solms and van Heerden 2015).

6ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
The main ethical issue of Edward Snowden case situation implies that if the situation failed to
take into the autonomy of all others as ethical agent then serious issues will rise respectively.
First of all Edward Snowden failed to give proper respect to his office colleagues into the
account of the autonomy during stealing the access codes of his colleagues (Papandrea 2014). He
also did not about the society that if people come to know about these then how the humanity
will be negatively affected.
Edward Snowden found the degree of investigation and surveillance program details of
National Security Agency on the American citizens and others. The former technical assistant
stop worried about that the American government will investigate in its attempt to disturb any
unethical activity by unjustified attacks to protect the confidential and credentials of the
American citizens (Landau 2014).
The other issue highlighted for the situation is data stealing, where Edward Snowden also
took part in. Data stealing is referred to as an act rater wrong way to take personal data,
credentials without his or her permission or without let them even know. This particular part of
the case was crucial as the activities of Edward Snowden dismissed the social standards of
people’s expectation in terms of respect (Parsons and Molnar 2017). This anticipation inside the
way of every person is needed to stop them from doing unethical acts in any field.
The other two issues at that point highlighted are also essential issues within the general
citizens. Edward Snowden used to work for the contracting organization National Security
Agency (NSA) while he got a chance to go around data those without any doubt may change the
living style of the American citizens and rest of the world also as admitted by the Government of

7ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
United States (Bakir 2015). He took opportunity as an employee of National Security Agency
(NSA).
Q4. Who is affected?
The ethical contradiction fails to define that whether Edward Snowden was the traitor or
the hero for the case scenario. After revealing the credentials and the surveillance program
directed by National Security Agency (NSA) it has been found that both the agency and the
common people of America were affected due to the incident that took place. It was the
responsibility of the Government to look after the security of the country (Landau 2014). The
security program operated by National Security Agency (NSA) is not highlighted as an illegal or
unethical program from the security point of view but at the same time without let any person
know his or her credentials or personal information checking are not ethical (Friedman 2015).
However, besides two of these things the other affected person who was Edward Snowden
himself.
Q5. What are the ethical issues and implications?
Edward Snowden was a former technical assistant whose illegal behavior was that, he
challenged the state control system directly by revealing the fact of surveillance program
operated by the National Security Agency (NSA). Though, by revealing the facts he established
the republic but according to the United States Constitution Edward Snowden was not a
legendary character (Weinstein, Drake and Silverman 2015). According to the comparison
between the Nuremberg war crime incident and this situation all together it can be said that, it is
necessary to put the civic commitment on every in terms of individual’s importance and the
honesty and honorary job done by Edward Snowden should be analyzed.

8ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
According to a National Journal, the issues were not related to Edward Snowden but it is
all about the inquiries activities done by him. In this particular case scenario the argument is just
not about the person rather it is about the implication of the issues those are highlighted
(Crampton 2015). It must be about the serious investigation about his activities raised from his
job role. Last but not the least political as well as governmental issues always win because it has
the power but for this case still there is a misbalance.
Q6. What can be done about it?
Nowadays the technical standards can be fixed completely by a collective group of
technical experts who are having skills and knowledge on technology and its implications. There
are numerous numbers of changes taking place every day and not only over the internet world
but also in the technical field. The traditional ways of living life have even being completely
changes with these innovations and creation (von Solms and van Heerden 2015). Technology
also changed the laws and changed the way through which the courts used to choose issues.
Technology has changed the way that individual considers previously. Being an innovative
advancement internet service has come inside the society and become a special part of daily
lives.
Regardless of whether people are using it or not, whether people have expensive highly
technical cells phones or not and regardless of whether a person has a computer or not
association of internet and a telephone line the credentials are easily accessing by the technical
experts (Bakir 2015). It can be defined as a technical advancement though this is completely
handled by human. It can be similarly a human operated by states. These all details are learned
from the case scenario revealed in the year of 2013, from the incident of Edward Snowden
(Branum and Charteris-Black 2015). After eight months of the scenario disclosure at the

9ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
beginning of January 2014, Google measured that there was 50 percent of expansion in their
encoded traffic measurements that the programs of Google were handling in different way
without let them knowing. This was over the ground that the superior part of the route Internet
specialist organizations such as Facebook, Gmail, and other service providers are encoded which
was exceptionally important (Torres 2015). Experts can implement a next level of protection
assurance for the communication by incorporating simple technical changes within the system or
offered operations.
Q7. What are the options?
There are many options those can be used for protecting high volume data from external
assaults. It is necessary for both organizations and personnel to use proper security operations to
keep their data protected. Even after getting aware about the Edward Snowden case scenario, it
become the responsibility of every individual to take necessary actions for protecting information
from unwanted access. The available options for protecting data from unauthorized access are as
follows:
Encryption technology: It has been found that, in this technical era, encryption
mechanism is the most advanced approach that should be used for protecting assets. In this
approach a shared key is used by only the sender and the receiver and none of the third parties
are allowed to get the access of the shared key (Friedman 2015). The data send to the receiver
are encrypted and can be decrypted by the receiver only as they have the decryption shared key.
Even within the transmission channel there is lesser chance of hijacking information without
permission.

10ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Strong password protection: People must use strong password to keep the credentials
protected from intrusions. A strong password cannot be easily broken by the hackers. So, this
mechanism can be applied according to the needs.
Firewall: Application level firewall protection can also be used to cover up the data
transmission channel. Application firewall is referred to as a highly technical firewall which
limits the access of the operating system of either laptop or cell phones. It has the ability to
control the flow of data from the central processing unit and also to the central processing unit. It
checks the datagram or the data packet first before sending it to its destination (von Solms and
van Heerden 2015). It also offers additional protection guideline to the users for making the
execution a controlled one. It also offers different specified application those are not available in
other protection mechanisms. It helps to keep the security of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and
Dynamic Library Link (DLL).
Q8. Which option is best - and why?
Among three of these options, for the Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency case
the most suitable one is the application of encryption mechanism. It will help the citizens of
America to keep their credentials controlled and protected from external. Without accurate
technical authentication none of the external users will be able to access the information stored
the server or files (Crampton 2015). Not only this but also it helps the users to maintain the
system integrity so that the externals can never commit frauds. Encryption is referred to as a part
of compliance and thus it comprises of different security methods such as HIPAA, FIPS and
other regulations also.

11ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Conclusion
From the overall discussion it can be concluded that, in order to keep the credentials
secured from the external attackers it is necessary for any agency to adopt advanced surveillance
program. With appreciable surveillance system the internet traffic records and the other
credentials will keep secured from external assaults. Edward Snowden admitted that he passed
all information and classified documents to a newspaper reporter of Guardian and Washington
post. The content of the report revealed the complete surveillance program applied in NSA. After
revealing these documents it is found that the civil rights were completely violated. It is quite
natural that the employees who are working for National Security Agency will have proper idea
and right to access credential information. However, in order to avoid this kind of situation
certain ethical solutions in terms of options are provided. It is expected that, with proper
recommended solution this sort of ethical dilemmas can be resolved accordingly.

12ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
References
Bakir, V., 2015. " Veillant Panoptic Assemblage": Mutual Watching and Resistance to Mass
Surveillance after Snowden. Media and Communication, 3(3).
Branum, J. and Charteris-Black, J., 2015. The Edward Snowden affair: A corpus study of the
British press. Discourse & Communication, 9(2), pp.199-220.
Crampton, J.W., 2015. Collect it all: National security, big data and
governance. GeoJournal, 80(4), pp.519-531.
Friedman, M., 2015. Edward Snowden: Hero or Traitor: Considering the Implications for
Canadian National Security and Whistleblower Law. Dalhousie J. Legal Stud., 24, p.1.
Friedman, M., 2015. Edward Snowden: Hero or Traitor: Considering the Implications for
Canadian National Security and Whistleblower Law. Dalhousie J. Legal Stud., 24, p.1.
Harris, S., 2016. Privacy Imperiled: What Would Brandeis Make of the NSA & Edward
Snowden?.
Hays, D., 2015. The Ethics of Government Surveillance: Is Edward J. Snowden a Hero or a
Villain?.
Isin, E.F. and Ruppert, E., 2017. Citizen Snowden. 1932–8036/20170005.
Landau, S., 2014. Highlights from making sense of Snowden, part II: What's significant in the
NSA revelations. IEEE Security & Privacy, 12(1), pp.62-64.

13ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Margulies, P., 2015. Defining Foreign Affairs in Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act: The
Virtues and Deficits of Post-Snowden Dialogue on US Surveillance Policy. Wash. & Lee L.
Rev., 72, p.1283.
Nolan, C., 2017. The Edward Snowden Case and the Morality of Secrecy. Catholic Social
Science Review, 22, pp.291-310.
Papandrea, M.R., 2014. Leaker traitor whistleblower spy: National security leaks and the first
amendment. BUL Rev., 94, p.449.
Parsons, C.A. and Molnar, A., 2017. Horizontal Accountability and Signals Intelligence: Lesson
Drawing from Annual Electronic Surveillance Reports.
Torres, C., 2015. Claudio Colaguori (ed.), Security, Life and Death: Governmentality and
Biopower in the Post 9/11 Era (Whitby: De Sitter Publications, 2013), $39.00, ISBN: 978-1-
897160-81-7. Foucault Studies, pp.320-323.
von Solms, S. and van Heerden, R., 2015, January. The Consequences of Edward Snowden NSA
Related Information Disclosures. In Iccws 2015-The Proceedings of the 10th International
Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security: ICCWS2015 (p. 358). Academic Conferences
Limited.
Weinstein, J.M., Drake, W.L. and Silverman, N.P., 2015. Privacy vs. Public Safety: Prosecuting
and Defending Criminal Cases in the Post-Snowden Era. Am. Crim. L. Rev., 52, p.729.