Earlier quoted context omitted.
An earlier article submitted here was by the the pentagon paper's guy (who decided not to go into exile), in which he said Snowden did the right thing and would have ended up like BM had he stayed.
While I understand that the authority that you're appealing to is considered canonical, it's still an appeal to authority. Ellsberg has no more actual insight into the treatment one should expect to receive in the civilian justice system than any other 2013 hacktivist. After all we have the existing example of the NSA whistleblowers who did stay, and while they were not treated kindly by the judicial system, they wer…
I wasn't appealing to authority because I wasn't making an argument -- just making sure you knew of the articles existence. Also, in reference to "it's still an appeal...": You shouldn't imply that an appeal to authority is always wrong (It's only wrong if the authority is not appropriate; and it's never implied that authorities are infallible). However, you rightly went on to attack the authorities arguments -- but like I said, nitpick for fun.
One thing that's not clear to me is your last paragraph. Why was Snowden approving of judicial oversight? My understanding was that he had faith that a broken system might repair itself, then upon realize it was only getting worse, leaked the info to the public. Escaping this system afterwards wouldn't be hypocrisy.