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Edward Snowden is asking the US president to pardon him based on the morality of his action.
Well, here is a completely opposite view from the other side, so to speak:
http://observer.com/2016/09/were-losing-the-war-against-terrorism/
"Since 9/11, NSA has been the backbone of the Western intelligence alliance against terrorism. Its signals intelligence is responsible for the strong majority of successful counterterrorism operations in the West. More than three-quarters of the time, NSA or one of its close partner Anglosphere spy partners like Britain's GCHQ, develops a lead on a terror cell which is passed to the FBI and others for action which crushes that cell before it kills. If NSA loses the ability to do this, innocent people in many countries will die.
Unfortunately, there's mounting evidence that NSA's edge over the terrorists is waning. It's impossible not to notice that jihadist emphasis on communications security and encryption, which is now gaining ground, began in 2013. That, of course, is when Edward Snowden, an NSA IT contractor, stole something like 1.7 million classified documents from his employer, shared them with outsiders, then defected to Moscow."
"However, our precious edge in the SpyWar is waning fast. We are no longer winning. We're about to hear a great deal of unwarranted praise of Ed Snowden thanks to the hagiographic movie about him by Oliver Stone that's to be released this week. Don't be fooled. Snowden is no hero. In truth, he and his journalist helpers have aided terrorists in important ways. Snowden and his co-conspirators have blood on their hands—and perhaps much more blood soon thanks to their aid to the genocidal maniacs of ISIS."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:07PM
Makes you think the government's motive isn't to fix anything but, instead, to just keep expanding its powers and reach. They purposely look for imaginary problems that are so rare that they don't really need to be addressed and they use it to justify more government overreach without actually addressing those 'problems' while ignoring the problems that actually need to be addressed but the government is too lazy to do anything about them. Easier to avoid addressing a non-existent problem and to then use it as an excuse for more government overreach.
I think it is far more likely it is good old fashioned human corruption at work, rather than any vast, complicated conspiracy to gain more government control over us. Let's look at Florida for example (Florida is always a fine example of corruption and villainy, should you need a quick go to...). Governor Rick Scott is lusting after funds to "fight" the Zika virus. If he was simply interested in expanding government overreach, he would have grabbed the funds for expanding Medicaid when he had the chance as well. But he turned those down those funds because they were earmarked for a specific purpose (helping poor people for chrissake!) and had to be accounted for in their use. But Zika money? That sort of government funding is a grant that can be handed out to potential donors and family members* or simply swallowed up in mostly "administrative" costs. Bureaucrats absolutely love that sort of thing for reasons that have nothing to do with control of the population. The only control involved is a marketing effort to gain public support.
*It turns out Rick Scott's wife is heavily invested in a Zika mosquito spraying business.