CAVITE STATE UNIVERSITY

Don Severino De las Alas Campus

Indang, Cavite

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Department of Computer and Electronics Engineering

REACTION PAPER: SNOWDEN

Submitted by:
Alyzza Marie F. Mendoza
201312578
BSCpE 5-1

Submitted to:
Mr. Bienvenido C. Sarmiento Jr.
Instructor
 Edward Joseph Snowden was a former U.S. citizen who now reside at Russia. Before

moving to another country, he used to work in intelligence industry for 9 years from 2006. Before

being in this study, he trained for the Special Forces but due to an accident, he was forced to quit

the force. He worked as a private contractor for the NSA, for the CIA and directly for the agency.

He’s been a system engineer, solutions consultant, and a senior adviser for the CIA. He was given

these positions yet he didn’t receive a formal education which shows that hard work and talent can

help a person be where they want if heaven permits.

Snowden was first deployed in Geneva where he worked to maintain the CIA’s computer

security network. XKeyScore was first introduced to him there, it’s like a search interface wherein

the user can search for anything without restrictions unlike Google which only shows the

information the public was allowed to see. It works like using a keyword selector that search for

everything which includes the chat, emails, SMS. Everyone in the world can be searched in this

platform. Hackers can activate the camera of the laptop or web cam of a PC without the prospect

noticing. It can also be seen in this platform.

Edward was then deployed to Japan wherein the United States of America have a good

relationship but the country still spies and plants sleeper on their physical infrastructure that once

the Japan was no longer an ally, it will be lights out. It was also done in Mexico, Germany, Brazil,

and Austria. This is also where he built a back-up system called Epic Shelter that if there was any

catastrophe the country wouldn’t lose any data.

 He described how they follow a person who may be a threat to the country, it was like a

web wherein they follow the prospect’s moves. Who they communicate with, and then they will

follow the trail of these persons interactions to other people and so on.

Epic Shelter collects the finished intel and then he decides to make another centralized

database wherein it will serve like an index and is called Heartbeat. He started developing it when

he was in Hawaii. He ran across the amount of data the country had been collecting all over the

world. It is in this place where he decides that it is enough, he illegally get the information from

the agency and decides to revealed it to the world. This makes him run to the other side of the

world because his country is hunting him. He would not be able to go back home.

The government executes cyber espionage to other countries in order to gain confidential

information which they can use in the future. In order to prevent attacks, they’ve been building

programs that can give information they needed.

Thinking from their point of view, maybe cyber warfare is now the war every country was

engage into maybe that’s why they were constantly developing tools in order to gain information

from everyone and prevent any threats but thinking morally, it is upright wrong. Not only it invades

the privacy of an individual being followed, they also attacked an entire country be it an ally or

not.

Even though the movie was set in a different country, it is still applicable to us. We do not

know, maybe they are already spying on us what with the recent events that is happening now.

The bottom line is that the government who is in-charge of protecting the people is the one who

don’t do their duty by using our data without the consent of the people and not just theirs they may

be invading our privacy right now or launching an espionage. There must be a concrete law that
protects the citizen and the country from these acts. Because cyber warfare is the next big thing,

we can’t fight back head to head, we may lose it all with just a blink of an eye. Philippines should

further give importance to the cybercrime so that’s why we will not be victims anymore. There are

cases of other countries attacking us and launching espionage yet we can’t fight back because we

don’t have a strong foundation of cyber security. I hoped that through these movie, they will realize

the importance of it.