I'm shutting people out of discussing with me like all the time.
Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise.
The downvoted comment was this:
I can't say I see him as a villain, but definitely not a hero. I hold back my judgement, because we are just too far away to know what's going on. He did expose some pretty bad practices to the general public, but asylum in Russia afterwards? Are you kidding me? That just looks super fishy to anyone with at least an ounce of critical thought in his brain. Especially in the context of the Crimea debacle.
Now back to the point, the opinion that Snowmen is guilty of treason is held by a majority. And to me that doesn't make sense, because I personally want to live under the rule of law and in such a nation nobody should be above that law, not a secret service, not the president, nobody. That the US government is capable of illegally spying on their own citizens, using the taxes of those citizens to do it, well I want to know about it. That Germany is spying on their own citizens in cooperation with the US, I want to know that as well. I also happen to believe that my right to privacy should be above your right for security and if that ain't gonna happen, then at the very least I want to know where my taxes are going. And last but not least, we happen to live in a society in which the mass-media is constantly failing us and our rights are being constantly eroded. Therefore I consider Snowden to be a hero, because regardless of his motivations, his actions were the right thing to do.
And I could go on with lots of reasons for why I believe the above, but I'm tired of doing that for everybody that regurgitates a mainstream opinion without at least making an effort to explain why. Hence I believe that the comment in question is noise.
And as somebody that was born in Eastern Europe in a (now) ex-communist country, I must say that censorship (as used in your comment) is not incompatible with free speech. In fact it is required for people to have ways to filter out noise - you're still free to speak your mind regardless, therefore using that term doesn't win you any favors from my point of view ;-)
Also, the comment being down-voted above is really noise. It doesn't add anything interesting to the conversation. If it would have been an interesting point of view, then I would have agreed that downvoting is bad, but noise is precisely what downvoting is for.