[nickpsecurity]

That's two of you ignoring the point of what I said to bring up nonsense technicalities. Let me being you back to the real world.

In U.S., as in many countries, there exist intelligence agencies whose job is to get secrets out of foreign countries. This is legal. There's usually also laws that protect secrecy of those and other activities. In US, such classification applies by law unless it's a criminal act they're trying to conceal. Leaking that information is a felony that, depending on info, might also damage (i.e betray) the US. Leaking criminal activity that was classified is whistleblowing. Not only form but main form for this conversation.

Snowden's whistleblowing by leaking proof of illegal surveillance and perjury by government I don't dispute. However, Snowden also leaked tons of tools and activities dedicated to legal, foreign surveillance. What NSA was legally required to do and which he personally agreed to in case of stopping foreign hackers (eg China). Worst, he leaked it to news organizations in thd countries NSA was spying on.

So, far from your abstract reply, Snowden betrayed his country by leaking legal, mandated, acceptable-to-Americans operations. He didn't have to and shouldn't have. He also heroically blew whistle on dirty stuff. So, he's both a traitor and whistleblower on leak by leak basis. That simple.

[patall]

But again, that is only from your american perspective and under the assumption that he would have been treated fair if he had not leaked the "legal" stuff. Assume he had only revealed that the US spied illegaly on its own citizens, what incentive would there have been for other countries to grant him asylum? Pretty much none (even considering that even now they do not garant it to him). So this is kind of an insurance for him (together with other documents that he did not reveal but could if they tried to catch him).

[nickpsecurity]

"what incentive would there have been for other countries to grant him asylum?"

Depends on if Russia would still like to give him asylum for sole reason of pissing off America as they are right now. Anyway, you're changing the discussion from a heroic whistleblower to someone who will only blow the whistle if he has extra dirt specifically to get asylum. Much less honorable. Not even an option for most whistleblowers.

"So this is kind of an insurance for him (together with other documents that he did not reveal but could if they tried to catch him)."

No, it's not. He's guaranteed they'll throw everything they have at him by leaking everything. They were intercepting diplomatic planes for goodness sake. People tracking those torture flights indicated one showed up at a German airport he would've went through when they asked him to come in. They were possibly willing to black bag his ass. They don't usually do that even with likes of Manning.

No, he's in a really, really, bad situation. He has nothing further to leak as insurance per many interviews where he gave it all away so nobody could torture him for information. If he does, Russia almost certainly knows it already as a condition of his stay. He's literally choosing between being imprisoned in one police state or living in a police state that does 10x worse than what he leaked on the same topic.

His options would've been better if he leaked only domestic stuff, tried to play it stealthy, and maybe selectively leaked docs to the country he wants asylum in. Instead, he leaked it all out of conscience or whatever with global disruption & embarrassment for NSA. The rest is history.