I'm not saying it's OK, I'm just saying the assertion that the NSA is "currently breaking the law" is doubtful. They shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but if you have congress passing acts authorizing X, a president who's regulations basically affirm X, and courts that refuse to rule on X, that's sorta the definition of legal acts.

There's a difference between "legitimate" and "legal," the NSA is doing the latter, not the former. Snowden is (claiming) to do the former, and freely admits to be in violation of the latter.

To be honest I'm not actually sure the NSA is breaking the law, they've got FISA rulings, the Protect America Act 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, all of which basically legitimize the known aspects of PRISM -- PRISM's who schtick is basically implementation of Title 50 USC 1881a. I don't think these laws are constitutional or legitimitate, but we'd need new law or a constitutional amendment to clear the air, because a lot of lawyers (and the SCOTUS for that matter) seem to disagree with me.

How can you advocate punishing Snowden while the NSA continues to break the law? At least Snowden is done with his law breaking.

I would definitely advocate trying Snowden.

We have a right to know what our government is doing, and the people voting for these idiots are responsible, but that does not mean they agree with their candidates 100%.

I don't see what "agreeing" with a candidate's actions has to do with it, we're responsible wether we agree or not. We're responsible regardless of who we vote for, or even if we vote or not. If you're a citizen, you're responsible -- if you don't like the candidates, you're responsible for changing the system to produce better candidates. Nobody else is going to do it. It's counterproductive and obnoxious to always vote for some marginal third-party and loudly assert "none of this is MY fault!" Your job is bigger than just turning in a ballot.

Did you ever consider why third parties in the US always lose? A protip: if your theory of politics insists that commanding majorities of people are persistently lazy, stupid or evil, you've got a bad theory.

Considering the situation, why would anyone have an iota of respect for the ignorant general public?

This sentiment seems completely at odds with his stated intentions. Again, if your theory of politics...

Another false dichotomy you're setting up. It is possible to believe that the general public is being fooled by the government or is ignorant, and still believe that there is a non-zero chance that positive change could happen if things are leaked.

I think this chance is significantly lessened by his refusal to stand trial, and his insistence on disclosing information that's patently intended to weaken the data collection of western powers to the benefit of his benefactor, Russia. His loyalty and intentions are definitely in question -- his actions are either fantastically principled, or he's epic trolling all of us. Most epic trolls, however, tend to lose track of exactly how serious they are and how much they're trolling. In this sense I agree with you, and Snowden is definitely not one thing or the other, though I suspect he's so deluded that even he isn't sure how much he's serious and how much he's just doing this to troll authority.

Insofar as he's leaking classified information just to tr0ll authority, though, he definitely belongs in jail.

That we elected someone does not give them a free pass to fuck everything up and say it's our fault.

It might not be our "fault," implying moral or direct culpability, but as citizens of a republic, the actions of our government are our responsibility, even if we didn't vote for the guy, even if we didn't vote at all. We have elections and we agree to be bound by the rules of them, and we confer great powers upon the people that win elections.

Do votes hold zero consequence for voters? If an elected leader does poorly, is it always just his fault, and the voters don't have to reconsider anything?

(I would add that, in the case of Bush, it's pretty clear the voters did want him to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, considering they reelected him by a healthy margin subsequent to those events, so I'm not even sure your concrete example applies. He didn't "fuck things up," he gave people pretty much what they wanted, they just wanted really fucked up things.)

Again it's like this total double-bind. If you think that there's a good chance that people won't properly debate the NSA after you've released the information, if you don't trust the American people to take it all in and take responsible steps one way or the other, there's absolutely no reason to release the information in the first place.

Unless, of course, you're motivated by pique and a desire to embarrass powerful people and institutions, because you're a radical that just likes to break things.

but he doesn't trust that we'd see he'd have a fair trial.

He doesn't trust the US government. And no, just because someone voted for someone, that doesn't mean they agree with the candidate 100%.

We're responsible for the fairness of our trials, not our government. The government isn't some foreign occupier that imposes its justice on us. YOU were the one downthread who was arguing that we're obliged to know everything the government does, because we're responsible for what it does on our behalf. Either we're responsible for what our government does, thus we must know everything it does, or we aren't responsible, so we have no duty to know. If we must know, we ar responsible, so we are responsible for the fairness of Edward Snowden's trial.

This would make sense if Snowden had an iota of respect for the American people's wisdom and discernment, as opposed to his doctrinaire ideology, but as you intimate, he probably doesn't:

When it comes to actually trusting the American people to come through and deliver on their own ideals, he'd rather take his chances with Putin.

That's actually a good idea, sadly. The American people are stuck in the mentality that they need to vote for 'the lesser of the two evils', which allows the government to distract people with 'hot topics' like abortion, gay marriage, etc., while making them ignore all the other important issues.

Exactly, he thinks we're moronic sheeple that must be lead by the nose to his morally superior position. This is why his argument is ultimately irreconcilable with his actions -- he says he made his disclosures to encourage debate and to let people know what's really happening, but he's unwilling to stand trial because he's reasonably sure that while people are upset with PRISM, they're probably just fine with the NSAs global surveillance in general, a program that he has utterly betrayed. He says he does this on our behalf, but he won't dare take the chance we won't be grateful. You cannot claim to be an idealistic American while fighting for American ideals from a Moscow safe house.

I believe we should also take into account human rights to the best of our ability, even if those people live in another country.

To be honest I think this position is excessively idealistic.

And are you sure you're not merely a government cheerleader?

I think governments can be legitimate institutions, and even when they aren't, the rights of their constituents, let alone their opinions, their votes, and their moral attachments, are at least as important as one man's moral crusade to make the world into what he thinks it should be. Who elected this guy?

At least someone voted for Barack Obama; when he does wrong he can say with total accuracy, "this is the job you elected me to do," and the people must concede, setting aside all the demerits, "yep we did." Edward Snowden is a self-appointed international morality cop, he's completely beyond all responsibility, let alone accountability, to anyone for what he does.

He can say he does things on behalf of "the people," but these are the kinds of empty promises governments make too, and it's not like he'd dare chance the kind of justice "the people" might give him -- he trusts us to be able to analyze a decade of the NSAs dirty laundry, but he doesn't trust that we'd see he'd have a fair trial. When it comes to actually trusting the American people to come through and deliver on their own ideals, he'd rather take his chances with Putin.

Legal != moral. I, for one, want to know what my dear little government thugs are doing, legal or not. If these things are legal, perhaps that needs to be changed. Releasing information like this puts the issues into the spotlight.

The net result of this whole affair is the US and its immediate allies lose all of their intelligence programs, while Russia gets to keep doing whatever it wants.

I might buy the idea that somehow we're all morally implicated in what our country does, but to be honest, I don't actually think a lot of what the NSA does abroad is immoral, either. I don't think you really care either, since these are "thugs" you clearly feel no responsibility for, you probably just get a little righteous indignation high out of seeing the government embarrassed, kinda like Snowden.

Because he's a human being with an opinion, access to the constitution, and knowledge of privacy and human rights.

But I disagree with him, I think it's completely appropriate for our country to spy on foreign leaders; I definitely would support the NSA recording every telephone call made in Afghanistan, we're fighting a war there, that kind of ability is awesome - awesome until he told everyone it was happening, having the effect of making it useless! Nobody tells me to think this way.

George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Jim Clapper and Keith Alexander all had opinions, access to the Constitution, and knowledge of privacy and human rights, and they came to different conclusions too, wrong ones, surely, but they were at least as qualified as Edward Snowden. Are you sure you're not just special pleading for someone, just because he happens to agree with your prior beliefs?

And why is there so much focus on Snowden himself?

Well he broke a lot of laws, and he revealed a lot of government activity that wasn't horrendous, along with the horrendous stuff. Just about everything him and Greenwald disclose now are things that are completely legal for the US to do.

I don't think it's unfair for people who don't want to be abused by their government to move elsewhere.

That blames the victim -- the government doesn't have to change, the people should just "love it or leave it." I think you're basically coming at it from his perspective though, he clearly despises nation-states and institutions of any kind, and thinks everyone should be as "principled" as him and free agent themselves to "free" countries like Russia (the herpaderp from him on this issue is particularly extraordinary ).

You can't have it both ways, you can't say Snowden is a traitor and the NSA is not, and advocate for punishing one and not the other.

Well, you can say Snowden was entitled to blow the whistle on PRISM, and that he shouldn't be punished for that. OTOH, he's a traitor for revealing the extent of US global surveillance, or any other programs which were not illegal. It's not unconstitutional to tap Angela Merkel's cellphone.

Is anybody here illogical enough to believe that that makes any of it okay?

Why is Edward Snowden qualified to decide what's "okay"?

He might want the government to follow the constitution, but that doesn't mean he's a masochist or a martyr.

Even if the court is a kangaroo court, civil disobedience requires standing trial -- you expose the illegitimacy of the system by showing people the system is rigged. Thoreau stood trial, Martin Luther King did, cripes even Hitler stood trial a the critical point in his career, it demonstrates that you do not consider yourself above the reach of a system that can affect all of us: Snowden accepts the possibility of Gitmo because, in principle, all of us could be sent to Gitmo and taking a Get-out-of-Gitmo-Free card would be unfair.

That's if he believed in reform, but I don't think he does.

Oh, so he was a double agent then? Worse, he was playing a double game for his own agenda? This isn't getting better.

If you are concerned someone is going to "maliciously" divulge secret information to the public for no personal gain but the satisifcation of causing disruption? So what? I can live with that trade off. Its better than the treat whistlblowers as traitors we have now.

That would suggest that random government employees can exercise their personal moral judgment over what their country's allows to do. So, PRISM is illegal, disclosing it, assuming ti works like Snowden says it does, it's legitimate whistleblowing. However, tapping foreign leader's phones is completely legal and every country on Earth does it -- disclosing this serves no purpose, Snowden has disclosed it because he believes he's qualified to morally arbitrate which US programs should be secret and which shouldn't.

That's kinda the issue -- a crankish libertarian former Ars Technica poster/current Russian agent is effectively nominated himself as US national security declassifer in chief, regardless of what our elected representatives or anyone else who's legally been given that job has to say about it. It's illegal to spy on Americans but it's also illegal to leak stuff -- and leaking stuff that isn't illegal and doesn't really affect Americans serves no purpose but to hamstring US intelligence gathering and embarrass the US government. Which is why he works for Vladimir Putin now.