Could you imagine if our IT, without telling anyone, started going through student and faculty’s emails?

Some of you might be outraged by this.

“How dare they!”

“This is a violation of my privacy!”

Some of you might not care less what IT does. You might think it’s a way to “help with security.”

Then, of course, some of you might want to do something about this situation.

Now, imagine if this was on a Federal level.

It might not be that hard because three years ago the National Security Agency (NSA) was exposed by a man named Edward Snowden, who has since fled the United States and is currently staying in Russia.

Why Russia? He can’t be extradited because U.S. and Russia don’t have treaties that allow a person of interest to be handed over if they were not on U.S. soil. If Snowden had gone somewhere else, like England or Germany, the U.S. could have extradited him and he’d currently be rotting in prison.

Even if Russia and the U.S. had an extradition treaty, Snowden has been granted political asylum, which usually stands above the extradited treaties. This basically means that Snowden has been granted protection by Russia, because he is a refugee from America.

Now with one day away from the release of “Snowden,” a movie about the life of Edward Snowden and what he did at the NSA, Snowden has publicly asked President Obama to grant him a pardon.

Snowden believes he did the United States a service by exposing what the NSA had been doing under the American people’s radar for so long. He believes he did the morally, and ethically, right thing and should be pardoned for that.

But people like White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, says that Snowden “harmed our national security.”

Really? Did people die? Was millions upon millions of dollars lost? People could argue that Wall Street harms our economy but no one will bring charges and lawsuits upon them.

So why is Snowden different? What did he do to deserve not being pardoned?

People will say there is a price for freedom. People die, life moving changes occur and disasters too terrible to comprehend happen.

But what about the price of privacy? Does what we do as innocent American’s (because granted there are some Americans who unfortunately side with terrorist) on our phones, laptops, tablets or other devices have to be monitored every moment, of every second, of every day, for our “protection?”

So, bring Snowden back into main stream media.

Talk about the service he did for this country.

Go see the movie that comes out Friday.

Question what the government thinks is right.

Afterall, isn’t the government supposed to represent the American people?

Isn’t the government supposed to be about freedom and justice without the cost of shady agencies and liars?

That’s the America we want to believe in.

That’s the America we want to exist.

That’s the America we want to live in.