53% agree that he should stand trial. That's not the same as being convicted. He did break the law, so it stands to reason that he should stand trial. Snowden himself said something similar if I recall, that if he was sure he would stand a _fair_ trial he would return to the US.

He should stand trial, but he had no whistle-blower protection as Hillary claimed he might have. So he had no choice but to flee to avoid getting caught. Sure he broke the law, but without him breaking the law we would not have known about the NSA domestic spying.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/...

Reddit sees Snowden as a hero, the Federal government sees him as a traitor. I think he is more of a hacktvist. He did what he did to bring out the truth, even if he did break the law and flee to another nation for protection.

Exactly. A guy working in the US intelligence service who fled with stolen information to China then Russia is not someone that should automatically be granted clemency. He should be investigated and tried. He might be the hero everyone here and on reddit imagines he is, or he might just be another shady character in geopolitics. It's frustrating to see people so blindly picking sides or misinterpreting opinions.

>"fled with stolen information to China then Russia"

Typical misconception, sad to see it on HN.

He did not flee to Russia, he got stuck on his way, because the US revoked his passport. Russia was the only country who could stand up to the US. Few other countries dared to offer him asylum.

Unfortunate it had to be Russia, given their civil liberties record, but he HAD NO INTENTION of going there.

Also he wasn't "with stolen information". He did not keep a copy with him on his way.

I'm glad to know about the stuff he revealed. Interestingly enough, nobody has any doubt that China and Russia already knew about the extent of public surveillance that Snowden revealed. His most heinous crime was informing the public.

> He might be the hero everyone here and on reddit imagines he is, or he might just be another shady character in geopolitics.

This already has been answered by his conduct. Everyone by now has an opinion and no trial is gonna change that.

ps. The people here and on reddit are the ones who actually understand what he is talking about. If this crowd stands beside him, that alone says a great deal about him IMO.

That means there is 81% of the public that a powerful orator and good debater can reach with a good argument.

It is very disappointing that Bernie Sanders at least did not try to reach that 81%.

People believe what they are told. People are tribal and abdicate their beliefs to external sources of "higher powers" of their approved tribes, including what they perceive to be powerful people.

Happens in politics, happens on HN. Be more manipulative to change the world.

If I may contribute to the HN self-righteous tone, so sad that the educated tech savvy elite in these forums get so lost in their smug rush to polarized judgements.

Easy to see that Snowden did U.S. citizens a service of exposing where normal checks and balances had failed in the collection of data on Americans. Sure he broke the law to do so, but the benefit is so obvious that a pardon doesn't seem like it should be that politically toxic at all.

Also easy to see that giving huge quantities of unvetted secret information to foreign journalists does with near 100% probability put that information in the hands of the Chinese, Russians, or other bad actors (relative to the U.S.). A journalist is a trivial target, as Snowden would absolutely understand. If it can be shown that there is information that impacts national security negatively, then for that subset of the stolen data he should face prison or even death penalty.

The OPM breach revealed the identities of every CIA agent and undercover FBI/ATF/DEA agent, but nobody from the Office of Personnel Management is being held accountable for allowing that to happen. Name one bit of information that Snowden exposed that is as harmful.

Polls are largely unreliable and easily manufactured.

First most are done by phone, which limits the pool ( you get mostly old people with land lines) second the wording can dramatically change the results. Essentially polls are just another state manufactured tool of propaganda.