longwayhome
Posts: 1035
Joined: 1/9/2008
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Sometimes people have to stand up against the wrongdoing of their own governments. The ultimate price is often their own freedom or their life. The very creation of an independent United States of American through a bloody revolution was at least partly an attempt to do just that.
There is always collateral damage. I deeply regret many of the implications of Snowden's actions but it cannot be denied that he spectacularly confirmed the extent of the illegal police-state like actions of his own government and prompted a re-examination of the actions of surveillance agencies across the western world. He has already paid a higher personal price than most to do a service to western democracy.
I am conflicted about the whole balance between breaking the law and revealing greater injustice, especially as he may have endangered lives in the process of doing it, but at the very least he should not be hung to save the reputations of those engaged in immoral and undemocratic actions against their own people and those they claim to be their allies.
There is an argument about how far a democratic state should go to defend its own people, when those actions themselves can harm the state, the people and the freedoms they so value, let alone the effect on other states and their people. At least after Snowden, even those who ignored the warnings about these things cannot deny the importance of this issue to our lives, the sort of societies we want to live in and how far we are willing to have our freedoms curtailed by those we are supposed to trust to govern and defend us.
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RE: Snowden Report from Congress - 
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