I think the answer falls into political lines:
I asked a buddy of mine right after the story broke. He’s one of those who posts an anti-Obama Facebook article of the day (seriously, is there a repository for those: “Guys, post this today”).
Is Snowden
His answer: Wait and see (I silently added, “to see what Fox News tells me think”)
I’m personally fine with Snowden’s actions.
The year is 1942, and you are an American citizen living in the US. Eddie Snodokov, a physicist employed by a firm working with the Department of War, steals and provides to the international press thousands of pages detailing the US government’s plan to create a bomb powerful enough to level an entire city, complete with technical schematics and sums of data that he admits he didn’t look at before handing over, hours before hopping aboard a steamer to Germany, which promptly grants him asylum.
Are you personally fine with his actions?
Why, it’s almost as if that’s an entirely different thing than what Snowden did.
When Becky Hendershot tells the whole freshman class that Susie Parker gave a boy a hand-job under the bleachers, she is a gossip. When she tells the whole freshman class that you gave a boy a hand-job under the bleachers, she is a dirty, loud-mouthed BITCH!
In what way? Did Snowden not steal an inordinate amount of national security data and turn it over to the press without going through it, then defect to an enemy state?
Wrong analogy, Scooter. :smack:
The only bomb that Snowden dropped on the US is that their own gov’t was spying on them.
<Putin> I am shocked! Shocked I tell you, to learn that the US has been spying on all communications going in and out of their country. </Putin>
I can’t help but notice the way you avoided answering the question.
Are you personally fine with Snodokov’s actions or not?
No. I believe I fully answered your question.
Well, I guess when Russia levels an American city, we’ll all be suitably embarrassed.
So why are you OK with one act of treason and not the other?
Not all acts of treason are created equal.
So you do acknowledge that Snowden is a traitor, then?
I acknowledge that he broke the law.
I’m simply not inclined to treat him as if he hand delivered nuclear weapons to ISIS.
Nor did Benedict Arnold deliver the means by which the British could prevent American independence. Does that make Arnold an American patriot for exposing secrets that The Man didn’t want The People to know?
Has it been determined whether or not Snowden is responsible for any one being killed or tortured through the information he released?
Once more, a much less than apt analogy. Say, you’re good at these! :rolleyes:
Obligatory John Oliver link, perhaps more interesting for the “Man on the Street” opinions than the Snowden interview itself.
Plus all of the details of how the US was spying on many other governments around the world. Put a fly in the ointment of diplomatic relations with many countries.
There was a better way for Snowden to handle his concerns. And I laugh at the assumption that he was about to be snuffed out.
As it should have.