Snowden's and Captain America's Defiance

Edward Snowden is called both traitor and hero in equal turn for leaking top secret documents about the NSA and its surveillance of the American people. After watching the segment John Oliver did on Snowden on his “Last Week Tonight” show, I am still conflicted over Snowden’s actions, and on a greater scale, still very conflicted over the role of technology and surveillance in our nation. On one hand, the abilities of the U.S. government to record people’s phone conversations and keep track of their data, without much, if any, checks on their power to do so, is both alarming and something I immediately want shut down. Then again, in the most ideal terms, this large breach of privacy is used to help keep the American people safe. I don’t know when to say “enough is enough.” It seems like technological surveillance in the world just keeps escalating, and it makes me feel a little sick, and also a whole lot of paranoia. 

For the most part, I am glad Snowden leaked the information because at least now that information is out there and now the public can do something about it. There would be no way for the American people to respond if they weren’t even aware of the issue. However, was Snowden careful enough about leaking the information? It’s true that he could have been a lot more careless about releasing the documents—he chose to contact a few select writers at The Guardian and allow them to work on the story, but there was the incident with the poorly redacted document by the New York Times that revealed information about monitoring ISIS, and I am sure that there were smaller and larger consequences all over the globe. Also, when John Oliver pressed him about the matter, Snowden seemed to imply that he did not read all the documents before deciding to leak them to the public, which for me, was a bit of an issue. If you’re going to release classified data, it seems irresponsible not to read all of that information. 

Yet, overall I support Snowden’s choice to leak the information. He saw something that he thought was wrong, and tried to do what he believed was right in response. There’s not much more anyone else can do. I am glad that the American public is aware of the NSA’s powers and its ability to look into our private lives. It’s only matter of waiting to see how the public will respond in the coming years.  

Now to shift matters onto how this relates to Captain America: Winter Soldier, there are some obvious parallels to draw from the film and the situation with Snowden. In the same way Captain America left S.H.I.E.L.D. because he longer believed the agency was doing the right thing, Snowden left the employment of the American government, in particular the NSA.  In the same way that Black Widow leaked the information about S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra’s plans, Snowden leaked classified information about the NSA and its capabilities. However, what struck me when I thought about the movie and then Snowden’s situation is the concept of transparency and knowing who are the good guys/bad guys in the world. Part of what troubles Cap is that he can no longer clearly see sides of right and wrong, and the same thing could definitely be said about our world now and with the Snowden situation. Is he a traitor? Is he a hero? It’s hard to say, and in Winter Soldier, Cap also struggles to identify his enemy. 

Yet I would argue that for the audiences watching the movie, it is still clear-cut for us who is the bad guy and who is the good guy. We don’t have to do any of the work. We know who the superhero is ---Captain America, and guess what, it’s not hard to identify him, he wears bright blue and red colors in a somewhat obnoxious costume that resembles the American flag. I don’t have to do any guesswork about who the enemy is, all I have to do is stand behind Cap and his shield. In the real world, the world with the NSA and people like Snowden, who looks like any other person on the streets, it’s harder to define the good/bad guy, and perhaps that’s why we enjoy superhero movies. We know who to root for there. Even when the superhero is struggling to identify the villains and heroes of the plot, we as the audience already know that the superhero is our champion to stand behind.