The government would get to tell the jury he gave away XYZ classified documents, and he would not be allowed to even mention why and would have no chance of getting that overturned on appeal.
Snowden has said he will come back and stand trial if he is allowed to raise whistleblowing as a defense. The government has not taken him up on that offer.
edit: First source google had to offer: https://whistleblower.org/in-the-news/wsj-op-ed-why-edward-s...
Excerpt:
>[M]embers of Congress, journalists and advocacy groups keep repeating the same argument: Mr. Snowden should turn himself in, mount a solid defense and all will be righted at trial.
That’s a fantasy. I served as legal adviser to two high-profile whistleblowers between 2010 and 2013, former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake and former CIA officer John Kiriakou, both charged with espionage. I also witnessed last year’s court-martial of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning), who faced charges of espionage and aiding the enemy. Here’s a run-through, to the extent that I am allowed to offer, of how such a shadowy proceeding would unfold.
If the government isn't righting its wrongs, it's because you (not necessarily you specifically, but "the people" as a whole) have explicitly put in power the people who are doing the bad things.
This is everybody's fault. Yours included. We all enabled this to happen.
That's the beauty of a democratic system. It clarifies and cuts through to the core of our culture. Americans fear the idea of foreign terrorists more than we fear privacy encroachment, and thus, we were delivered the results of that belief.
The system worked! It represented our wishes perfectly. The problem isn't "them" (the government). It's us.
1) Vote them out
2) Revolution
I'm rather a firm believer that option 1 is still on the table and we don't have to resort to likely bloody methods. But in either case it is up to the people in the end. I am not convinced that there's been coalitions formed to actually do #1. I'm not actually convinced most people are upset, even though I think they should be.
Still on us though. Unless we want to see the nation invaded, there really is no one else with standing to address the growing problem.
A class level action is needed. When things reach clearly, can't miss it, can't live with it levels of unacceptable, we may see that happen.
Or, maybe we see just enough placating and theatre to trundle along for decades.
Last time we moved like that, it was the 30's.
People struck the crap out of basically everyone, handing FDR position to go and get the New Deal done. Those strikes and actions were illegal and legal. A whole class in high solidarity acting right out.
His follow on was never seriously discussed and in the decades since, we have seen many moves to prevent a similar scenario from happening again.
What we do not know is whether that history can be repeated.
The response today might just be brutal.
It is all terribly expensive either way too.
https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-11/is-u-s...
https://thebaffler.com/latest/were-a-republic-not-a-democrac...
> It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.
A democracy doesn't have representation. So while his definition maybe different than what we tend to understand today, neither is he arguing that "republic" is the same as what we mean by "democracy" today.
Protests and social pressure do work with the right amplitude.
Whether that's due to the media's portrail of them in film and TV over the years with their omnipotent powers or just the view that the government is an all seeing entity.
So in most people's view he just leaked the governments methods, not the fact they were doing it (and abusin their power in doing so). Because of this the Government can spin this as him leaking their secret sauce rather than them being in the wrong.
A high percentage of Americans are informed by domestic "news" and that newstainment has declared Snowden to be the bad guy as you said.
Among ordinary people not into politics and or tech, few know his name. If they do, they almost always also talk about him being a traitor, threat, etc.
To take advantage of whistleblower laws (or at least, gain public sympathy as one), the criminality you’re uncovering would need to be far, far worse.
That was completely illegal at the time, and I hope that it still is.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/second-circuit-rules-united-stat...
See this for one recent decision indicating that the NSA bulk collection program was both constitutional and legal.
The unfortunate reality is that it falls into a legal grey area and has, in fact, been held by certain courts to be legal.
Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity. “Possibly illegal” PRISM just wasn’t bad enough for Snowden to get the political or legal protection of public sympathy.
> Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity.
The issue here is that nothing will ever be “unambiguous and horrendous illegal” enough regarding NSA behaviors, given that the goal post is always moving.
Subjecting himself to the risks of trial would be insane, considering the tremendous amount of illegal things that were done (and continue to be done) to Assange.