Right Livelihood.

There's purpose behind whistle-blower laws, when a person, company, or government decides to break the law (international or domestic) - someone who understands their responsibility to seek justice sometimes is given no other choice but to speak out to stop it. Too often, now that means they have to give up everything they know in the name of the greater good because those who commit the crimes they expose hold so much power of influence and money - they make the lives of these whistle-blowers a living hell.


Drake, one of six people indicted for leaking secret information since President Barack Obama took office in 2009, said the FBI investigated him because it believed he was the source of a New York Times story published in December 2005 that first revealed the NSA's wire-tapping program. He says he was not the source of that information, and 10 felony counts against him were dropped when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour's charge of mishandling government information.


"My life was turned upside down and inside out," said Drake, who now earns an hourly wage as a technical expert at an Apple store."I know what it's like to live in a surveillance state because the surveillance state was on me, riding me, for so many years. They obviously wanted to do me in. It was relentless. I wouldn't want any American to go through it." Drake said as he was still suffering the consequences of his actions."My life was essentially destroyed." Drake said, noting that the case took a terrible financial and personal toll. He lost his retirement savings and went into debt as his legal bills approached $100,000.His advice for Snowden: "Be lawyered up to the max and find a place where it's going to be that much more difficult for the United States to make arrangements for his return." 

Edward Snowden said he had thought long and hard before publicizing details of an NSA program code-named Prism, saying he had done so because he felt the United States was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American.                             

There's purpose for civil disobedience. Yes, it may make you late to work, but in return it will bring about huge advances in this "free" society such as, hmm, a legislative end to slavery and segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested dozens of times in his activist career, and now people are being arrested for the same acts of rebellion last seen 60 years ago, including America. Today, part of America's population stands up for the same cause. For the sake of safeguarding interests and maintaining peoples' liberties.


Maybe you don't want to know, maybe it's just easier to only worry about yourself and those closest to you. But the whole world needs you, you and everyone else. It's time to expand your range of concern and rid yourself of fear, we're all the same and our actions are just as explainable as any strangers would be. You can't possibly expect peace to authorize when the rights of humanity are being ignored.