The National Security Agency is an intelligence organization in the United States that monitors not only foreign countries but American citizens as well. Known as a whistleblower to some, but a true hero, Edward Snowden leaked classified documents from the NSA leaving almost everyone second guessing the government and how secure their phones are. Edward Snowden dropped out of his high school before he was even 16 years old and went to community college instead because he wanted to study computers. He attended Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland two different times. This first was from 1999 to 2001 and then again from 2004 to 2005. Snowden went into military training in May of 2004 before his second time at the community college. He was in special-forces training in the Army Reserves but never finished because he was discharged in September of 2004. Although Snowden told The Guardian that the reason he …show more content…
Without a doubt, Snowden made people question how secure their personal lives are. Now no one can really know if the message he or she is sending is being read be more than the just the intended recipient. Even though it isn 't a guarantee that every one of our phones will be tapped, knowing that the NSA has the ability to do so makes it hard to trust the organization. The German Government caught wind that Verizon had been giving the NSA their users phone records and ended all ties with the phone company. Since the documents were released, there has been a grand rise in encryption, mainly from the big internet sources. The sites that were popularly used for social media, emails and messaging had more privacy added and better disabled outside access. (Casino) Simply by people knowing they are monitored makes them want to do exactly what they think the people monitoring them want them to do, therefore giving the government more power.