[tablespoon]

> Eh, they sent the USSR a couple of drawings of circles, and Ethel Rosenberg apparently did some typing.

And all Snowden did was copy some files to some flash drives. Describing significant acts in a mundane way doesn't make them less significant, it just omits all the important facts.

> They were, loosely, spies for a foreign power, but their impact was absolutely negligible

This doesn't sound like "loosely":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Semyonov

> In 1942 Semyonov persuaded Vasily Zarubin to transfer Julius Rosenberg and his contacts from the CPUSA-Jacob Golos channel to the direct control of the Rezidentura, with himself as the assigned case officer. The actual transfer occurred on Labor Day weekend, 7 September 1942, at a meeting in Central Park. Bernard Schuster brought Rosenberg to the meeting. Rosenberg was then subjected to a thorough vetting and recruitment process to include training in tradecraft and a probationary period. Alexander Feklisov was assigned to assist in managing Rosenberg. Once the formal recruitment of Rosenberg was completed Semyonov used Rosenberg to conduct formal recruitments of two of Rosenberg's friends from City College of New York, Joel Barr and William Perl.

Impact is also irrelevant. If someone robs a bank, but does it incompetently and only makes off with $50, they're still guilty of robbery.

[pasabagi]

They were a young couple with infant children and they were both electrocuted to death, in Ethel's case, for typing out her husband's letters.

There's no collection of acronyms and russian names you can add to that that makes it any less of a crime. Prison would have been extreme. The electric chair was pure barbarism.

[tablespoon]

> They were a young couple with infant children and they were both electrocuted to death,

The appropriateness of the punishment is an entirely separate issue.

> in Ethel's case, for typing out her husband's letters.

You're describing things in a misleadingly mundane way again.

The relevant question there is "did she know what was participating in?" If Julius robbed a bank and Ethel knew about the plan, willingly drove the getaway car, and went to jail for it; then it's misleading to say she went to jail for "driving her husband around." She went to jail for being an accomplice to a crime.

[pasabagi]

> You're describing things in a misleadingly mundane way again.

I take your point, but why don't we turn this framing on its head? 'Two soviet spies sentenced to the death penalty for espionage', is less mundane, but it's also correspondingly far less close to what objectively happened. It's worth keeping in mind here that legal language, especially around penal methods, has justification and euphemism baked in. Legal language is a way of framing mundane and often dimly connected events so they make sense from the perspective of basic legal categories: defendants, guilt, etc.

The actual concrete facts- they knew and stole nothing of value, they died in excruciating agony, especially Ethel, who was repeatedly electrocuted until she caught on fire, and they left two children orphans, are all raw facts, no framing needed. The legal dimension, the manners in which we understand culpability, crime, and punishment is all a structure that is used to describe, rationalize, and interpret right and wrong in our society. The actual penal system, the incarceration or execution of criminals, is the concrete, real body of criminal law. You can argue about the merits of really-existing-criminal-justice all you like, but you can't exclude it from the discussion.

[thrownintospace]

How do you know what they stole? Dont assume the premise.

Even a small detail can advance science. What about the husbands work in radar tech?

They were clearly spies.

[tablespoon]

> The actual concrete facts- they knew and stole nothing of value

Even if true, I don't think that matters.

Also, I'm not really interested in arguing about their punishment, capital punishment is a tangent from a tangent, but that seems like that's all you want to talk about.