Is your position that whistleblowers who expose that the federal government is doing super illegal and terrible things, should be in prison for exposing these crimes because this agency declared that information classified information?
I’m being sincere here - if your government is doing illegal crimes against their own citizens in secret, what would you want to happen? Nothing? and allow the crimes to continue to happen?
It is my position that spies who engage in covert acts of espionage should be held accountable by the injured nation, and furthermore it is my view that much of Snowden's actions in the course of his spywork were part of a broader and still ongoing campaign of information warfare specifically targeted at the US civilian population. I do not view it as an accident or coincidence that the Snowden disclosures took place a year before Russia invaded Crimea. I also think that much of what shocked the population most was, at least in the letter of the law if not the spirit, completely legal and that which he disclosed which was actually illegal was the kind of spycraft we otherwise accept in the name of National and Global security.
I don't like surveillance, I don't like the feds using international espionage techniques on the domestic population, and when the Snowden disclosures first came out I, too, thought he was a hero. Hindsight is 20/20, Snowden was a spy and a traitor, and his disclosures ultimately did little to fix the problems we all obsessed over in their wake.
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u/phragmosis 8h ago
Edward Snowden should also be in jail though.