Poor Richard’s News:

Since Edward Snowden went public over the weekend, there has much discussion on what kind of person he is and how he should be treated for leaking the NSA’s spying programs to the press.  Some say he is a traitor and deserves the death penalty. …

Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican John Boehner both say he’s a traitor for violating the law and revealing the United States’s national security capability to our enemies.  Meanwhile, liberal film maker Michael Moore and conservative firebrand Glenn Beck both say he’s a hero for risking it all and revealing the NSA’s egregious violations of the 4th Amendment to the American people.

So, which is it?  Traitor or hero?  …

Here are a few things to consider:

1. He said in his interview with the Guardian that on multiple occasions, he expressed his discomfort with the NSA’s actions with his superiors, and each time they told him to be quiet and not worry about it.  I’ve read a few bits of commentary here and there that say his next step should have been to contact a member of Congress.  That might be the “correct” way to blow the whistle, but perhaps he had good reason not to trust his own representatives.  At the very least, he started out by raising the issue internally.
2. He did not release any information that put people’s lives in immediate jeopardy. Also in his interview, Snowden claims that he could have released the locations of every CIA station in the world, the names of every undercover agent, and the private emails of public officials.  If you believe him and acknowledge the he chose not to do this, you have to ask yourself why.  People like Speaker Boehner claim he hurt the US’s national security by “letting our enemies know our capabilities,” but that seems to me a pretty nebulous and flimsy argument. Snowden appears to have made a conscious decision not to put innocent people in harm’s way.
3. He went public.  The only reason we’re having this discussion right now is that he showed his face to the world.  He didn’t try to hide in the shadows.  In the spirit of John Hancock, he boldly made his identity known to the world, knowing that it may cost him his life.

The Founding Fathers knew they were traitors to the British crown when they signed the Declaration of Independence, but they also knew that there comes a point when loyalty to the law is no longer the same as loyalty to what is right.  In the same way, Edward Snowden appears to know full well that he is a traitor, but he chose to take action and speak out about his reasons anyway.

Yes, Edward Snowden is a traitor but not a traitor to the American ideals of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.  He’s a traitor to what America has become over the last 200 years: an ever-growing police state, a place where the rule of law has been corrupted by mountains of codes and regulations passed by unelected bureaucrats.  We’ve become a place where privacy no longer exists, where government agents and private contractors can search through our communications and violate our Constitutional rights without even letting us know about it.  Edward Snowden is a traitor to that America.

But Snowden is also a hero because he’s given us an off-ramp, an opportunity to turn around and put an end to the abuses of an out-of-control government.  The Founding Fathers recognized that government will always have the potential for oppression, and that’s why they gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to place shackles on government’s ability to abuse its citizens.  They invented a new kind of government where the founding documents were all about restraining the state and not the people.  Our government has clearly exceeded the boundaries that the framers set forth, and Snowden has given us a chance to return to what they gave us.

So, is Edward Snowden a traitor or a hero?  He’s both, and so were the Founding Fathers.