Yep! TBH I think it really says alot about the general failure of the US whistleblower statutes/protections that Snowden had to release information in the way that he did and has subsequently been so easy to vilify. IMHO ol' Eddy actually went about the leaking of classified info in a pretty responsible way with the whole Poitras/Greenwald "Big Trouble in Little Hong Kong." However you feel about the guy personally the import of his revelations is pretty undeniable insofar as it stimulated legitimate reforms of the systems he was criticizing (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Conse... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying...) which seems to me to be the basic test for legit whistleblowing. So, yeah, I would give the little eccentric a pretty high clearance given his track record... I'd probably let him out of russia too.

Sorry I don't know Snowden's heritage or if he would check out under security clearance. He looks to me like he could have East European heritage. If his parents were from the country of Georgia, say, then I'd expect clearance processes to take far longer (with their local script I imagine far fewer security cleared translators, and that acquiring documents on parents/relatives would be much harder).

Does that not seem reasonable?