In the movie Snowden, Edward Snowden reveals many of NSA's secrets by sneaking classified data out of the agency and reporting it to 'The Guardian". While Snowden was working in Japan, NSA worker, Gabriel Sol(character in Snowden) shows Snowden the program XKEYSCORE. XKEYSCORE is essentially a search engine but it's comprised of both public and private content(SMS, IM, email). While showing Snowden XKEYSCORE, Gabriel also showed him Optic Nerve. Optic Nerve is camera and audio activation. They were able to spy on a banker's sister in law in real time through her webcam while her computer was off. The programs themselves showed a moral violation in privacy, but the confidentiality breach that Snowden did by presenting these programs to the public was a violation of intellectual property. There is no doubt that the CIA and NSA both have contracts in place that do not allow these actions. Additionally, Snowden was charged with theft, espionage, and endangerment of US' security in Hong Kong[1]. After his exposure of NSA's confidential information, it cost country relationships with Brazil, Germany, and Russia. It also has affected cloud based computing companies due to customers loss of trust, costing companies an estimated $180 billion[1].
Going off of virtue ethics, it can be argued that Snowden did what was right for the general public, since they were being watched without their consent. However, he broke the contract he had with the NSA, betrayed his country by causing bad relations between the entire country and other countries, and revealed confidential programs that are crucial to the NSA's work.
References:
[1] von Solms, Sune & van Heerden, Renier. (2015). The Consequences of Edward Snowden NSA Related Information Disclosures. .
Going off of virtue ethics, it can be argued that Snowden did what was right for the general public, since they were being watched without their consent. However, he broke the contract he had with the NSA, betrayed his country by causing bad relations between the entire country and other countries, and revealed confidential programs that are crucial to the NSA's work.
References:
[1] von Solms, Sune & van Heerden, Renier. (2015). The Consequences of Edward Snowden NSA Related Information Disclosures. .