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He should be more afraid of what they will do before it is made public that he is captured.
He is no hero. He chose a path that made him a traitor. He chose bedfellows who are hostile to the United States. His very actions bring into question his motivations.
I detest that the NSA and the government feel free to disregard our constitution. I detest that the POTUS an alleged constitutional scholar seems to be fine with the misdeeds. None of this earns Snowden a free pass. He deserves to be put on trial for his crimes.
Just as many liberals, including me, consider Snowden a hero as a villain. There are just as many conservatives who think he's a bad guy as a hero, too.
Personally, I don't think he was heroic as much as a man of conscience. He saw a wrong, exposed it to the best of his ability, but did not accept that he had to be a martyr to the facts.
After seeing Bradley Manning's fate, I don't blame him. Why should anyone who blows the whistle automatically be a traitor, facing years in prison? Snowden simply understood what he was getting into, and made some plans beforehand. His conscience compelled him to expose what we all now understand was a danger to us all, and I'm glad he escaped the consequences so far. He was certainly brave in his actions. How many of us are prepared to give up their entire life for doing something that needs to be done?
Snowden will never be 'home' again. He will never have full amnesty, and he won't ever be able to come back to his former all-American life, family, relationships and friendships, again. He had a good, well-paying lifetime career as a secret keeper ahead of him, too. How many of us would willingly give up a $240,000 a year job in their 20's for nothing but a clear conscience?
Not me, for sure, or anyone I know. Especially these days. If i was his father, I would have done my best to discourage his plans.
Secrets are a slow acting poison that always corrupts their keepers. Secrets are also the most potent addiction a human can have. As long as a regular vaccine- exposing secrets- does not happen, they take over and grow like cancer on our society. They are a cancer on any society.
Blowing the whistle did not make Snowden a traitor. What made Snowden a traitor was revealing classified information to foreign governments. Had he simply exposed the illegal activities of the NSA, and kept his mouth shut about everything else he knows, then he would be a hero to every American. However, Snowden crossed that line in the sand when he gave China, Russia, and other nations the information the US was collecting on them.
As I have said before, I admire the courage of his convictions and I praise him for exposing the NSA spying on Americans, but should he ever return to the US I would want him tried for treason.
I am pretty liberal leaning and absolutely consider Snowden a criminal. When one agrees to work for a high security job, either within the government or contractually, you make a promise to keep classified information classified. Although I do not agree with many things NSA has been doing, Snowden did put national security at risk by releasing this information. He could have chosen to follow protocol and been a whistleblower but he opted to take matters into his own hands. He is no hero and deserves to be prosecuted. The fact that some of NSA's unlawful practices were exposed is not justification for his actions.
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