Does the U.S. government have a need to keep information secret?

By Maddie Miniats

 OCTOBER 3, 2017- The United States government has a definite need to keep information secret from the United States public because it is the government’s responsibility to ensure the safety of the American people. Allowing the American people to have full access to the government’s classified information would dismantle the difference between the citizens and the government. In some ways what Edward Snowden did was courageous and heroic but sometimes the citizens simply do not need to know.

As the Deputy Director of the NSA, Richard Ledgett, says if you are not placed into a category by the National Security Agency as a threat to national security, they have no interest in your activities online. It isn’t as if they are scrolling through the data of the recent meme searches of a 17-year-old online or shuffling through your chainmail.

Snowden expresses that the reason why the people should be up in arms is that we need to protect our rights for when we actually need them and not give them up so quickly. A response to that would be that no one is “giving up” their rights, people are just not as paranoid of the government.

People know the government needs to do what it needs to do to protect its people. All in all the people trust the system and trust the government. Though it is important for people like Edward Snowden to check the government’s actions and reveal to them that the citizens of the U.S. are cautious, there will not be a day in which there will be a free flow of information between the citizens of the United States and the United States government.

The citizens of the U.S. don’t want to know everything the government is undertaking just as much as the government doesn’t want to know that you have online shopped one too many times this month.