In May 2013, Edward Snowden, a former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked sensitive national security-related material both to Washington Post and The Guardian. The leaked reports revealed that the NSA used at least three Internet surveillance programs, known internally as Tempora, PRISM, and XKeyscore. The reports also revealed that the NSA collected metadata from telephone communications that it had intercepted both in the United States and Europe. Many of Snowdens critics have since claimed that the sheer scale of the material involved in this incident makes it the most significant leak in U.S. history. Whereas some of Snowdens critics have described him as a dissident and a traitor (who has also caused grave damage to U.S. intelligence capabilities), at least some of his defenders view him as a hero and a patriot (in part, at least, because they believe that Snowdens disclosure showed how the U.S. government had gone too far in its surveillance practices on its own citizens as well as on many of the leaders of closely allied nations).

Ethical Theory question: We ask the students to analyze the above case study using either two or four classical ethical theories. So, it is always from the four classical ethical theories such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue, and contract.