We are all well aware that Edward Snowden leaked documents have begun to reveal the levels the NSA has sunk to in its so called desire to keep America safe.
The major news outlets have bombarded us with stories of of email sweeps, phone monitoring, text message intercepts and other acts of spying of Americans.
Then we began to learn about the spying on the our allies like Spain, France, Brazil and one of our closest allies German Chancellor Angela Merkel. There is some justification tossed around saying everyone spies on each other but America was unlucky enough to get caught.
That may be the case but according to an article in the November 1, 2013 issue of Newsweek all of these leaks have caused enough noise to cover or detract from harm being done to US security, military technological information and businesses by China and its hackers.
The article quotes an American intelligence official as saying "Snowden couldn't have played better into China's strategy for protecting its cyber activities if he had been doing it on purpose". Further, the article raises the scary question of what would happen if there was a conflict with China, given their capabilities to hack into our systems. They have tech that's ours, that they've got by hacking us which would be used against us but could they also hack into our grids and sabotage electricity and other important systems? What about our banking and stock exchanges?
Snowden may have been trying to bring to light the fact that our intelligence community was out of control but what about any harm he might have caused? Where is the line between protecting the national security of a nation and going too far? Does spying on other nations to keep your nation safe mean that you give up the right to be outraged and act against a nation spying on you and stealing proprietary information and using it to benefit either militarily or financially?
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