I do think he broke the law (and I still like him. If I could wave a magic wand I'd bring him back and get the judge to give him a token sentence, or remand it to a civil matter -- breach of contract since he was a contractor), but that's just my opinion. I think there's ambiguity with respect to whistleblower laws, and he might want to stay out because he doesn't feel like he will get a fair trial, which, if I were him, I would not expect.

When you have to break the law to show that the government is breaking the law, you have break the law.

One cannot Stress this enough. As Brecht said, „where injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.“

so you think whistleblowing is illegal if you work for the NSA ?

That's a pretty great example of begging the question. Can you explain why you think what he did was whistleblowing and not whatever he actually got charged with? Further, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on why we should want NSA employees or contractors to make their own judgement call on what information should be made public or not.

If you have secret programs that are later explicitly ruled illegal, rampant corruption within the whole system (people with access stalking personal contacts), AND the highest authorithies in that whole rotten branch of government lying straight to the face of democratic representatives, how else would you go about improving things without violating the espionage act?

If my government had secret programs that my own courts would rule illegal later, I damn well hope that someone is going to run to the press,and I also hope that this someone is gonna get a medal...

Are you simply going to tolerate corruption, illegal and unethical behavior as long as there is some law that forbids talking about that?!

Just to be clear, he's charged with espionage, just like most government whistleblowers are, according to a very questionable interpretation of, I think, a 1914 espionage act, that previously wasn't interpreted like that at all.

What he did was clearly not espionage, because he didn't sell info to a foreign country, he released it to the American public. And if I recall correctly, he made sure not all of it was released, and it was redacted as responsibly as he could. That's not how espionage works. Charging these whistleblowers with espionage is a flagrant abuse of the law.

Criminal because exposing criminalities that a powerful state just declared top secret... very controversial - not only about the criminal but also ethically questionable if this is how a good democracy should work.