[choward]

How many citizens outside of people who understand tech actually understand how big of a deal it was? Also, the media hardly covered it and pretty much presented him as a traitor every time they did. What percent of the U.S. population would you guess has heard of the name Edward Snowden?

[deadbunny]

I think it's worse than that. The things Snowden leaked were simply the details of what I would think most people assumed to be true anyway. Not in a conspiracy theory way, but just an accepted thing. Most people don't really know the difference and supposed limitations of each three letter agency's powers.

Whether that's due to the media's portrail of them in film and TV over the years with their omnipotent powers or just the view that the government is an all seeing entity.

So in most people's view he just leaked the governments methods, not the fact they were doing it (and abusin their power in doing so). Because of this the Government can spin this as him leaking their secret sauce rather than them being in the wrong.

[ddingus]

This.

A high percentage of Americans are informed by domestic "news" and that newstainment has declared Snowden to be the bad guy as you said.

Among ordinary people not into politics and or tech, few know his name. If they do, they almost always also talk about him being a traitor, threat, etc.

[nmfisher]

Snowden disclosed programs that were unsavoury to some. But that doesn’t mean they’re illegal (even if only by reason of black letter law technicality). That’s not to mention all the other unrelated classified information. It’s not surprising that he has zero defence under whistleblower laws.

To take advantage of whistleblower laws (or at least, gain public sympathy as one), the criminality you’re uncovering would need to be far, far worse.

[dgellow]

The NSA has been revealed to gather and store crazy amount of US citizens data with zero oversight.

That was completely illegal at the time, and I hope that it still is.

[nmfisher]

We may want that to be true, but some US courts have disagreed.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/second-circuit-rules-united-stat...

See this for one recent decision indicating that the NSA bulk collection program was both constitutional and legal.

The unfortunate reality is that it falls into a legal grey area and has, in fact, been held by certain courts to be legal.

Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity. “Possibly illegal” PRISM just wasn’t bad enough for Snowden to get the political or legal protection of public sympathy.

[dgellow]

Damn, that’s crazy. Thanks for sharing this article.

> Which comes back to my original point - any whistleblower who wants to exit with a clean slate really needs to be uncovering unambiguously and horrendously illegal activity.

The issue here is that nothing will ever be “unambiguous and horrendous illegal” enough regarding NSA behaviors, given that the goal post is always moving.