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The Great Divide | 119 the NSA’s penetrations in China. Putin echoed this expansion of the whistle-blowing concept to adversaries. He complimented Snowden for having “uncovered illegal acts by the United States around the globe.” Putin’s defense of Snowden not only implied a global concept of whistle-blowing that justifies breaking U.S. laws but also pointed to America’s double standard in publicly complaining about Russian and Chinese cyber espionage. Snowden’s whistle-blower interpretation gained immense public resonance. Even after President Obama and leaders of both houses of Congress roundly denounced Snowden for betraying American secrets, the majority of the public, according to a Quinnipiac poll taken in July 2013, still considered “Snowden a whistleblower who did a service revealing government domestic spying programs.” Moreover, Snowden’s revelations helped stoke a growing distrust of the American government itself. According to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center after Snowden came forward, just 19 per- cent of the public said that “they can trust the government always or most of the time.” The support for Snowden was not limited to ) America. On October 29, 2015, a majority of the European Parlia- © ment voted to award Snowden the official status of a “human rights defender.” The former congressman Ron Paul went even further. He orga- nized a clemency petition in February 2014 for Snowden, stating, “Thanks to one man’s courageous actions, Americans know about the truly egregious ways their government is spying on them,” and his son Senator Rand Paul, who was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, called for a pardon for Snowden. Senator Paul’s concern fitted with the growing public apprehen- sion over increasing intrusion on privacy. Snowden was correct, in my opinion, in describing the threat of a surveillance state and the loss of privacy as a legitimate public concern. “We actually buy cell phones that are the equivalent of a network microphone that we carry around in our pockets voluntarily,” he pointed out from Moscow. The very technology involved in the electronic equipment we all use in the twenty-first century has made mass surveillance part of our daily life. There can be little doubt that our privacy has been | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 119 ® 9/29/16 5:51PM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019607