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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, Informative) by meustrus on Thursday September 15 2016, @04:50PM
There is a fundamental evidence problem with the argument that the Snowden leaks about PRISM and similar programs have hurt the war on terror. Specifically, no intelligence agency has ever provided a single cases in which evidence gathered through these programs played an important role. This despite being asked multiple times, both in relatively nonpartisan Congressional hearings and by journalists.
These programs have existed for enough years that the NSA must surely have at least one case whose details would not compromise current operations. Just one case where we can unambiguously say that PRISM data collection caught a terrorist. Can anybody even say that PRISM data collection discovered a terrorist? Or hinted at where one might find terrorists? Surely it's not that hard. And we don't need hard evidence or details. Just a single damn case to prove that it's all worth it. Without even the bare minimum of evidence, we can only assume that we get absolutely nothing out of this massive invasion of the privacy of American citizens and breach of international trust with our allies like Germany.
In other words, since they cannot produce a single shred of evidence, a single redacted case report, a single narrative of American victory, these programs are a complete waste of time and taxes whose only outcome is harming the long-term freedoms of American citizens.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?