No, what happened was that he attempted to fly to a relatively neutral country in South America, and the U.S. government (rather stupidly) revoked his visa while in transit.

The Russian government is actively conspiring to silence hundreds of thousands of people. Whether it's because they were unfortunate enough to have been born gay, or because they want to talk about Russia's annexation of eastern Ukraine, or whether they just don't think Putin should be in power forever.

Call me crazy, but I think that's worse than passive collection of reams of data.

I could go on and on. The Russians are not worse than the US, they're just not as good at hiding it.

You're absolutely right that the US has done some deplorable things in its past (including, as we now know, the recent state-sanctioned torture of probably innocent foreigners). That doesn't make what Russia's doing today, in fairly plain sight, any less repugnant.

For the same reason that it makes no sense to compare the US GDP to the size of Poland's navy, there's no value in comparing Russian censorship to US intelligence.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in...

I imagine if a Russian version of Snowden ever occurred, he wouldn't remain alive to continue leaking documents.

Further, the Russian government has presided over an incredibly well-documented increase in violence towards gay people. The notion in the above report that Russian gay people enjoy greater freedoms than those in the US is utterly specious.

That the author takes John C. Dvorak seriously should tell you everything you need to know.

That's pretty much the point though, isn't it? Of course the US is going to prosecute someone who reveals their state secrets on such a massive scale. Every country would. However, what they don't do is routinely assassinate and imprison political opponents.

In the same way, I agree with you that the cooperation between internet companies and the NSA/CIA is very concerning. However, I believe this still pales in comparison to the amount of oppression and state-control over the media that you see in Russia.

What the US is doing is definitely not right. But I don't believe we should let our disappointment about that trivialize the totalitarian state that is Putin's Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Based on your spacing and carriage returns, it's pretty obvious you aren't American and have an anti-American bias. Not saying the US is a shining example of civil rights - they certainly are not - but your comment adds nothing to the discussion.

At the end of the day, Snowden was a member of the U.S. Intelligence community and entrusted with classified information and, for better or worse, he willfully broke the law. What do you expect, that he would not be prosecuted? Do you think if that happened in Russia, Putin would have any reservation from assassinating him before he managed to flee to his biggest foe and reveal who-knows-what to earn his welcome?

I would like to live in a world without religious extremism, but it has and will always exist. They utilize the poverty and illiteracy of certain places in the middle east to make teenagers believe suicide bombing is the way to get to heaven. Humanity is facing many existential crises and this is the way we are currently handling one. It is definitely not an optimal solution, but it doesn't matter if we can't solve our ever increasing CO2 emissions and the many other problems resulting from greenhouse gases.

Everything the US does is to maintain their global position of power. The end goal is obedience to the US and control over as many natural resource and territories as possible. Either directly through military force, or preferably through subversion, coercion and integration.

This is not unique to the US, it is what empires do, and the US is now the biggest empire ever created. We have and continue to cooperate with, fund, and protect some of the most brutal regimes the world has ever seen.

Ours is not a noble mission with just wars to free the slaves of the world and introduce democracy. The only way democracy is acceptable is if the American candidate is electable. If the natives happen to make the wrong choice, coups happen, sanctions happen, directly military action happens.

These are not conspiracies, extreme leftist propaganda or the ramblings of Americas enemies, they are historic facts.

Are there other bad regimes in the world? Of course. Have their been regimes worse than the US? That depends. If you only want to talk about life in main land US, of course much much worse than that. If you include what regimes supported by the US has done it is hard to say yes or no.

Assange has a TV show on Russian state television, and Snowden is a guy who fled to Russia with literally thousands of stolen NSA documents and now does TV propaganda with Vladimir Putin. Those are not dissidents. Those are Russian agents, whether they realize it or not.

We will never know for sure, but did you watch "Citizen4"? A closer look at Snowden - IMO, it's highly unlikely that he was a spy. It is clear (to me, at least) that he is highly principled, not money-driven. He'd have to be an extremely good actor.

Its not uncommon for dissidents forced to resort to exile to be leveraged for propaganda purposes by regimes opposed to the ones with regard to which they are dissidents, but that doesn't make them any less dissidents.

Why do people want to make things exclusive that are not?

Apples and oranges my friend. Using the same academic tone, one could make even North Korea sound like a great civilized place to be, but then when you get there it isn't anything.