Do you have a Dropbox? Ditch it. Avoid Google and Facebook at all costs, as well.

I support Edward Snowden.

That is a sentence that enrages authorities, binds together activists, and can in one sentence show the true nature of someone.

For those who don't know who Edward Snowden is, he was an employee at the National Security Agency. He stole a massive amount of data from the NSA and started leaking it to the Internet once he found out that the United States government was committing widespread privacy violation on it's own citizens.

He then made a beeline out of the United States, since he was being pursued by massive intelligence agency groups, who could blame him? He found asylum in the country of Russia where it looks as though he'll be staying for the foreseeable future, despite the government's many, many threats and objections toward Russia.

He left his entire life behind, including his beautiful girlfriend, Lindsay Mills in an instant. He decided what was right and acted on it. She later met up with him in Moscow where they are now living peaceful, normal lives. With the exception, of course, that Snowden has massive amounts of documents that the U.S. Government is losing sleep over him having.

He has since revealed a good many things. For starters:

1. The government that we are responsible for keeping in check, has committed mass atrocities and put blood on the hands of many.
2. The same government has absolutely zero concern for the individual privacy of it's citizens.
3. Encryption works.

If you hadn't heard, when the iPhone 6 came out the FBI was FURIOUS that Apple was so bold as to protect the privacy of it's users.

The iPhone 6 comes with default encryption to protect users from things like thieving of information from people that have no right stealing it.

If you thought of a Black-Hat Hacker, typical bad guy type, you'd be right to think so. However, that list also includes government agencies and local law enforcements.

If you aren't quite sure what encryption is per-say, to put it simply; People can't read the words if the letters aren't there. That's encryption.

This was a fantastic move on Apple's part to assure it's buyers they were taking a step in the right direction, unlike some other companies (Cough. Cough.)

The way this has worked is that when computer technology first became a huge trend, our government was on top of it before most of the citizens even began to understand it. They gained a lead on us in knowledge and used it to their advantage. Now, we as a society have caught up and know how to protect ourselves from unwanted on-lookers, and like a baby who's had it's candy taken away, the FBI has cried mercilessly over it.

Why would government officials care if all we want to do is protect our privacy, though?

AHA! That is because they don't want us to have privacy. They want to rule us and have control over every aspect of our life. To quote Mr. Snowden in his interview with New Yorker Magazine,

 "We are no longer citizens who have leaders. We are subjects who have rulers."

Recent headlines have given some consumers some inward thought, when he told users to get rid of the popular data-back-up Dropbox and avoid Facebook and Google at all costs. That's a worrisome sentence for privacy concerned citizens who use the internet. Odds are, the average technologically-inclined person uses at least 2, if not all 3, of those programs.

The age-old argument that "if you have nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" is flat-out ignorance. Does that seem bold? If so, then so be it, because that kind of mindset will lay waste to American democracy as we know it.

I have no intentions to go to jail. Does that mean that I should not care if a black, teenage kid gets thrown into jail and doesn't get a fair trial (Ahem.)? No. It does not. Edward said it best in an interview;

“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you're saying, ‘I don't care about this right.’ You're saying, ‘I don't have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights – you don’t have to justify why you need freedom of speech.”

We must fight for the rights we do not need, or have use for. Why? Because somewhere there is someone who does need those rights, and the only way to keep them is to demand we have them, even if we do not intend to implement them.

There is the argument that Snowden betrayed his country, that he defected from the United States, and the NSA condemned him on acts of espionage. I would like to mention that the definition of espionage is to reveal vital information to an enemy. Snowden released the data he collected to the citizens of the United States.

By that logic, wouldn't the NSA, and therefore the U.S. Government entirely, be deeming their enemy is... us? Whoops.

"If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public."

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

Also, people believe that Snowden swore to the NSA, but they would be wrong. As a matter of fact, Snowden has never broken his oath;

"The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy. That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not."

"Regardless of what happens to me, this was something that we needed to know. I took an oath to protect the Constitution and I saw the Constitution was being violated on a massive scale." 

I support Edward Snowden and everything he fights for. If that's controversial maybe it's time for us all to look into the mirror, and our own hearts, and demand a little more of ourselves.

If you would like more information on how to protect your privacy, I will leave several links at the bottom for programs to use to do so.

I will be back tomorrow with another post, so be sure to check. To go with today's theme...

"You're not patriotic, just because you back whoever is in power today. You're not patriotic because you back their policies. You're patriotic when you help improve the lives of the people living in your country, in your community, in your family, those around you." -Edward Snowden

Just a heads up, the song I've chosen today is very NSFW but has a very powerful message. However, if you are easily upset by those types of things, do not listen to it.

A Proxy is a program that masks your IP Address so that websites and other people cannot trace your location. Here is one I personally find very reliable: IP Vanish

For a document back-up program to replace your DropBox here is one program that encrypts all your files so excellently, they themselves cannot access them even if they desired to: Spider Oak

Want a Search Engine that does not know where you are (and constantly remind you in that creepy way Google does) and will never access your personal information? I recommend Start Page

E-Mail is a large part of today's online interaction, and is also a big spot for hackers and government snoops, so it's best to be safe. For this there is Secure Email

And finally, browsers are necessary to access the Internet, our unlimited source of information. However, that doesn't mean you can't remain anonymous simultaneously. For that, head over to Tor Project