Seems like a logical, though not desirable, no. He didn't, and I would argue couldn't, have had the time. From the time he fled until his passport was revoked, was a pretty short amount of time. Additionally, had he been caught before releasing the data we would never know the name Snowden, or the abuses that occurred.

I would say that the time spent sifting through journalists to find someone who was trust worthy was better spent. That person would then have a shield around them which would protect them, even if Snowden was captured.

So basically, if had stopped to do that before releasing, then the likelihood that we would have ever seen any evidence, let alone the correct set of evidence, is very small.

If those assumptions are correct, then I can't help but think that I would have taken a few phone calls with me on my way out. A few mp3s featuring Dick Cheney and his family would make quite a point if released now for example.

There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]

There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.

There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.

In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.

He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.

The leaks themselves:

He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.

In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.

It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.

[1] https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hps...

Its easy to think about coulda, shoulda, woulda when fear for your life is removed from the equation. Snowden must have balls of some unimaginably dense substance. Personally, I'd rather put on a bright red shirt and beam down to to the surface in search of tritanium than do what he did. I'd have better odds I think.

Their ability? No, I don't. Did it promote people's inclination to resist the NSA. Certainly. But I would argue that those things would have happened over time anyway. So if Snowden caused any harm, I believe it was likely to be minor and of little consequence.

He wasn't justified because he didn't have to leak it. That simple. He could've just leaked the ones that targeted Americans or showed gross abuse rather than a lot of what we already, as Americans, allowed NSA to do.

Fair enough... But that'a assuming he had the time and means to carefully sift through it all and make those determinations. I believe his argument is that he turned the data over to credible journalists (as opposed to simply dropping it all over pastebins or uploading a torrent) exactly some somebody could go through it and determine which parts to actually publish, and which parts to withhold, so as to avoid serious harm to legitimate intelligence operations.

It's very likely that a lot of less calculating would-be Snowdens are lying in unmarked graves out there somewhere.

1. I don't think whistleblower protection would have applied anyways since what the government was doing was technically legal.

2. Snowden seems like an asshole and a nightmare to work with, but I don't think that should factor in to the credibility of any arguments he makes which are backed up with sufficient evidence.

3. The biggest thing that changed his perception for me was how much he leaked. It would have been better if he had only gone after documents that pertained to privacy of US citizens.

What was released (and how), and what we learned are two separate issues. As a U.S. citizen, it's preferable that the subjective legitimacy of what best serves public interest is not in the hands of ONE person. That's why we care about what was released.

While a portion of the leaked documents might positively benefit society, who is to say the net benefit in total was positive? Call me naive but I'm unable to make the call either way, even after having read through the revelations.

Leaking that info was sure audacious but not worthy of a get-out-of-jail free card or a thank you IMO.

> I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision

That's powerful stuff. Ellsberg was indicted but the judge declared a mistrial (due to prosecutorial misconduct). I think it's quite possible something similar would have happened with Snowden.

> Also consider that he's been able to advocate for privacy for years now, something he couldn't (easily) do from a cell.

I don't think Snowden has been an especially effective advocate for privacy among Americans, who remain skeptical of him. He's far more popular among Europeans. Anyway, my argument is that he would have been more effective had he not fled.

Snowden today also faces the paradox of public virtuousness, wherin goodness exposed in public is necessarily corrupted because it become self-serving. Allowing himself to be jailed would have mitigated that.

[1] http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/21/21065224-...

In any case, it's already been established that he broke the law in order to expose a much greater law breaking, but many if not most people believe it to be OK because we also believe that it was impossible to expose the information in any other way. Considering all the miss-steps most whistleblowers made in their activities, Snowden was remarkably careful and clean. He made some calculations on what he needed to collect to successfully expose the crimes he witnessed, and the accuracy of those calculations is up for debate. I could easily come up with several reasons why he might have thought that he needed all those documents while under duress. For example, there may have been evidence of other crimes, and there would be no way he could sift through the documents while still working. Also, he recognized that he needed to leak slowly in order to keep the story afloat, or else he would get buried under propaganda and forgotten, as has happened to other whistleblowers that released all at once.