Pardon Snowden

> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.

is simply false.

> - Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.

Nice innuendo. Please state your concerns in a concrete fashion. If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. If it is that he was stranded in a regime unfriendly to the U.S. regime, what do you expect him to choose? England? Canada? It is also good to remember that U.S. actions are responsible for him being in Russia.

> - Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.

You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.

> - Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.

1) Assuming "damage" is defined as spending money and time to evaluate the breach and implement corrective measures, sure. I've yet to see anyone point to anything beyond "I can't tell you, but be very afraid". Remember how the release was going to lead to imminent terrorists attacks in Missouri?

> - Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.

Proof, please.

> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.

"Secret agent skills?" Isn't that normally spelled with a "z" on the end?

> - Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.

"High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots. I except that sort of low-rent smearing from Slashdot and gov-contractor flacks, not Hacker News. And which is it - is Snowden a mad-1337 super agent super hacker, or and uneducated outsider? Character assassination works much better when you're a bit more consistent.

Anyway, shorn of the non-sequitur schoolyard taunting, what is the complaint? Intelligence operatives, shown to have expanded surveillance far beyond the imaginations of the voters in the democracy that supposedly as a voice in what they do, had their feelings hurt when they were exposed?

This is the same argument made by police apologists: if you keep taking pictures of us illegally killing people, we'll stop doing our jobs.

> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.

So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.

> But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.

Please describe the conditions under which whistleblowing is acceptable to you. If Snowden had received the documents from someone else (thus hadn't "misuse[d] hist admin privileges"), would that make it OK for him, but not for the hypothetical other person? Of it he hadn't been stranded by the U.S. in Russia (he didn't choose to stay)?

Based on your litany above, it sounds like intelligence whistleblowing is only acceptable to you when the documents involved are officially released, the release doesn't damage any existing power structures, no intelligence operatives have their fee-fees hurt, and the leaker is better educated and collaborates with journalists you personally like more.

Hence my argument, due process is less relevant than ever these days. It is not at all out of the question for Snowden to be considered an enemy combatant, especially since we apply that same logic to any adult male in the vicinity of a drone target.

Snowden is both a top professional and cares about our rights and freedoms. NSA is still needed (in some form) in the real world, and I would definitely feel safer if Snowden was at its controls.