That is indeed some black and white thinking! The US executive is a whole lot more trustworthy than most others. In fact, your very prosperity and freedom depends on this truth to a larger degree than you might want to admit.

And it is not clear that Snowden tried "the proper way". He says so, but he doesn't want to prove that in court. Instead he defects to an enemy state and cooperates with their intelligence services. And yes, he did defect and cooperate, the only question is what exactly he did (and still does) and how much of all of this was his intention.

The crimes Snowden committed, if any (it's not clear he could even be convicted), are absolutely legitimate. Publishing secrets you were sworn to keep secret has to be punishable. If someone decides to break those laws, out of ethical considerations, they must also face the consequences.

"He says so, but he doesn't want to prove that in court"

He doesn't want to have to prove something in a secret court, by powers who are clear about their stance, because he exposed them?

How evil.

" If someone decides to break those laws, out of ethical considerations, they must also face the consequences. "

But not if the "crimes" were necessary, to unveil the larger crimes.

Oh and he did face the consequences - he has o live on the run, outside of US reach. That only leaves Russia and co.

"Instead he defects to an enemy state and cooperates with their intelligence services."

And where is a slight proof, that he did do that, beyound releasing the info to everyone?

He is not stupid - once on the hook, he would always remain on the hook of the FSB.

On the other hand, protecting whistleblowers is essential for honest, transparent government, no matter their crimes. And the US simply does not do that, not even close.

Unfortunately, the crimes Snowden revealed may well not have seen the light of day without him, which suggests we don't have enough whistleblowers. And beyond that - even the bits of PRISM, XKeyscore and whatnot that were legal are simply not authorized by a democratically elected government; you cannot claim electoral legitimacy while keeping essential parts of your program not only secret, but even publicly paying lipservice to principles in opposition to your very own secret programs. To the extent various US administrations participated in creating these programs they thus necessarily acted without a democratic mandate; after all, they lied about it in public. That's not democracy; that's conspiracy.

Had the programs been discussed at least in general terms, or the quandaries of trading which freedoms exactly for security been acknowledged by the US government, you could make the argument that the technical details must remain secret, but the principal was supported by the electorate. But as is; the whole thing - up to and including the participating judiciary - is no more legitimate than any other stolen election won by lies, propaganda, and misdirection - the kind of principles the US clearly rejects (e.g. https://www.usaid.gov/democracy/supporting-free-and-fair-ele...).

I mean: I completely agree that likely snowden is a criminal. There's little reason to assume otherwise. However, that's kind of besides the point, isn't it? Much, much more important than any one criminal is the responsibility a government, especially one that claims to uphold the ideals of democracy to actually protect its subjects as it claims to. For a sense of scale - consider the fact that governments routinely accept the legality of war, despite the fact that it's essentially akin to accepting mass murder. And I'm not trying to make the case that extreme pacificm is the way to go; but rather the opposite - if we acknowledge that even some of the most serious of crimes are potentially acceptable in the defense of proper governance, then clearly, clearly mere whistleblowing should be a no-brainer, even if that means overriding normal laws.

So the question isn't whether Snowden is criminal, it's why is he criminal? I'd say the party at fault here is the democratically elected US government, not Snowden. The law on this matter is wrong, and should be fixed.

I don't disagree that Snowden had a better justification than most for his crimes.

Manning actually faced a trial, and the system even granted her some leniency. Snowden might have found leniency too, but he probably gave that up by defecting to an enemy state.

An enemy state that routinely commits worse crimes against its citizens, than the US has even been accused of. But in Russia, protection of Whistleblowers isn't even a subject worth talking about...