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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, Interesting) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:11PM
but if the best rebuttal the public can come up with is "your [sic] stupid and your opinion is wrong" then they've already won, and that's double plus bad.
How many times do we need to give detailed responses about how liberty is more important than security, how the surveillance doesn't actually increase security, how the mass surveillance is unconstitutional, and how the government can't even be trusted to conduct mass surveillance on the populace because every single government in history--including the US government--abused its power? How many times does it need to be pointed out that mass surveillance threatens democracy for countless reasons? [gnu.org] When will they shut the fuck up and stop trying to violate our freedoms? Obviously, never. They're dishonest, reprehensible authoritarians and they should be treated with nothing but absolute contempt.
It's interesting how if 'our side' gives a short and angry response, then we'll somehow lose, but if they keep repeating the same debunked garbage an infinite amount of times, that's fine.