Some of what he took and shared could be legitimately argued as whistle blowing but there's lots of other classified data about legitimate programs that was taken as well.
It seems disingenuous to focus on the collateral damage of his action and ignore the main target. We forgive our military their collateral damage all the time as an unfortunate side effect of pursuing a noble mission. Shouldn't he be afforded the same?
But...that's not breaking the law. When speeding is done as part of the police officer's job, it is not breaking the law.
In contrast, when a police officer speeds while not carrying out their duty, that is indeed breaking the law. The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2013 was awarded to an investigation that uncovered illegally speeding cops: http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7180
By definition, whistleblowing is disclosing information that shouldn't be disclosed.This is why there needs to be whistleblower protection: so that the "illegal" action is no longer considered illegal but a civic duty.
> The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2013 was awarded to an investigation that...
Funny you should mention that, in 2014, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to journalists who worked with material illegally provided by Edward Snowden: http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/7200
What about the FBI running a honey pot where they continue to allow children to be abused? Technically legal, but is it really something we should tolerate?
I completely agree with Snowden's leaking of the domestic spying program information, but he also leaked a lot of information not related to that. Foreign spying is basically what the NSA is supposed to do.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266875/exclusive...
That makes it sound like he dumped it indiscriminately.
Which is very misleading.
Edit: Though I did appreciate her Captain Renault impression about being so terribly shocked that as head of state she was a target for espionage.
It was illegal under German law. Should we ignore the laws of our close allies?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chine...
>Research by SPIEGEL reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter. And there is evidence that agents based at Pariser Platz recently targeted the cellphone that Merkel uses the most.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cover-story-how-...
Well, I suppose it's in China's and Germany's interests, but doing things like that that benefit another country at the expense of your own is generally called treason.
>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
From http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/3/essays/11...
In Cramer v. United States (1945), the Supreme Court held that a specific intent—adherence to the enemy, and therefore to harm the United States—is necessary, rather than the simple rendition of aid.
The initial comment is wise to point out digression in thought from the founding fathers and our current attitude toward government.
The US government revoked his passport while he was in an international "no man's land" (i.e. the international side of Russian customs), effectively making him stateless. He had originally planned to transit through Russia on to Cuba, and thereafter Ecuador or Venezuela. By cancelling his passport, the US government effectively trapped him in Moscow.
Heck, he couldn't have even have gotten himself illegally smuggled out. The US government forced the Bolivian president's plane, on its way back from Moscow to Bolivia, to land in Austria, where it was searched. Just on the mere suspicion that Snowden was on board. Forcing down the plane of the head of a sovereign nation and subjecting them to a search in a foreign jurisdiction sounds pretty damn illegal to me. Actually, it sounds like an act of war. But I suppose that doesn't matter when your country spends more on its military than the next 19 countries combined.
Also worth noting that the crimes Snowden has been charged with are two counts of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed just after the US entered WWI. Its original intent is clearly to punish people who endangered military operations during a time of total war. Given this intended purpose, it's a near certainty Snowden would be found guilty if he ever came back to the US to 'face the music':
Professor at American University Washington College of Law and national security law expert Stephen Vladeck has said that the law “lacks the hallmarks of a carefully and precisely defined statutory restriction on speech.” Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, “basically any information the whistleblower or source would want to bring up at trial to show that they are not guilty of violating the Espionage Act the jury would never hear. It’s almost a certainty that because the law is so broadly written that they would be convicted no matter what.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#Criticis...
This is a myth that keeps getting repeated. The US government didn't revoke his passport leaving him stranded in Russia, they revoked his passport the day before he left Hong Kong [1]. He traveled to Russia on what turned out to be an invalid travel document issued by the Ecuadorian embassy in London [2] (same one that Julian Assange is holed up in).
He was allowed by the Chinese to flee from a place that had an extradition treaty with the US and wound up in a place that doesn't. He put himself there. Honestly, the "It's the American government's fault I'm in Russia" argument that Snowden and his close supporters have been peddling isn't really much of an argument when it effectively translates to "If it weren't for the US government I'd be in Cuba or Ecuador right now."
> Also worth noting that the crimes Snowden has been charged with are two counts of violating the Espionage Act, a law passed just after the US entered WWI.
I keep seeing this argument being brought up, too. The age of a particular law has no impact on whether or not someone should be accountable for breaking it. If that were the case, I could quite literally get away with murder.
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-...
> Edward Snowden said he repeatedly tried to go through official channels to raise concerns about government snooping programs but that his warnings fell on the deaf ears
> In testimony to the European Parliament released Friday morning, Snowden wrote that he reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing
("appropriate channels" was a quote from the previous comment I was replying to)
Also, the article says
>The official said that Snowden had asked a question, but had not “raised concerns” about the NSA’s practices.
If it doesn't, then I am correct in calling it out, no?
The NSA will never acknowledge that they left him no avenue other than leaking - that would place him squarely as a noble whistleblower, who only went rogue when left no other choice (and, not at all a traitor).
Edit: since I can't reply to ikeboy below, I'll do it here - as others have pointed out, it doesn't matter that he leaked more than you think was appropriate, since everyone has a different measure for that. He also gave it to people far more qualified than himself to parse through - their choice to publish is not within his control. I'm sure you would have done differently, but this is what it is - we're better off for his actions, full stop. The rest is background noise.
1. "Different people think differently, therefore your thoughts are wrong" is invalid. People thinking something is morally permissible does not make it so.
2. Delegating responsibilities to others makes you responsible if they mess up. When you're doing something as sensitive as Snowden did, you better own your mistakes, and don't trust people who have agendas.
This wasn't an isolated incident.
3. I'm not sure if his actions are better overall. There's little tangible utility in having less surveillance. It's mostly in things like "you're slightly less likely to turn into a suppressive regime". It's not clear that outweighs the negative aspects.
But even if it was overall better, that doesn't make him good under standard ethics.
Or would you support a firefighter that saved ten lives, then went out and murdered five people? If not, you must not be using a total good metric.
Instead, themartorana assumes that the NSA did admit that, and then based an argument on that assumption. My reply was based on that further argument, and in particular the notion that Snowden had no choice, but the assumption was never justified.
> Many Americans believe in following the law no matter what.