Watched it tonight. Surprise, surprise, Hollywood casts him as a hero.

I'm ambivalent.

On the one hand, what he exposed was absolutely illegal surveillance on US citizens and others. That aspect is pretty clear-cut and needed to be exposed.

On the other hand, I have two huge issues with his actions:

1. He took an oath when he received his clearance(s) to protect that information. Having had the odd clearance myself, I know a little bit about the paperwork that has to be signed. In my mind, that's an equally clear-cut violation of the law and his ethical responsibilities.

2. By exposing the existence of the program, it seems pretty obvious to me that he did significant damage to our overall ability to protect this country from people who would destroy it.

In balance he is, in my opinion, a traitor and a criminal and should be prosecuted as such. Whether he was justified from a purely ethical standpoint is less clear.

I dont think he's a hero, I do think he half kept his oath to protect the constitution a la the 4th amendment. It's an odd position to be in and I am glad I didnt have to make it.

He knew going to his superiors they would squash it and it would go nowhere. I've been in the same "circumstances" where you know nothing will happen for reporting the misdeeds. The option I took was to quit. If Snowden quit it sure woldnt have fixed the issue.

As far as damage to the country I think its hard to say. I knew a few years after the internet came out swirling rumors about "carnivore" the surveillance program. I just figured they are always watching. Case i point Bin Laden was only using couriers and no phones. If a guy "in a cave" in Afghanistan can figure it out I'd venture to guess most criminals can.

Tough for me to armchair this one but I think he weighed his options and looked at what happened to William Binny and that guided his decision a bit.

Citizenfour (2014) is a good watch. One of Laura Poitras's post-9/11 America trilogy - My Country, My Country (2006), and The Oath (2010) being the other two. You're probably talking about the oliver stone film, which I won't be seeing.