I think he should have stood his ground on conviction and not fled. You either believe in your cause and face the consequences or you negate your impact by running away from the core belief you held validating the actions you found cause to fight against. The Guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers went to trial. He hid for a bit, but eventually he went to trial ready to face the charges. By doing so he further embarrassed the Nixon administration legal council by their own idiocy.

I consider him a whistleblower, not a "leaker" and a traitor as he's being portrayed. Him and Bradley Manning both.

He leaked big info that people act like they care about, but are more interested in Taco Bell. Look at the twitter trending list of america.

meh

He's a little shit, to be honest.

I think its a big deal for the US and how he has all that info he can just throw around to anyone who asks. It proves that US is corrupt. Why would he leave if he had a job at CIA(i think) and the just leave? Because maybe he didn't like what they were doing and had to tell other countries about it. I hope he gets away. But he'll b a fugitive for the rest of his days here on earth. Poor guy. Life is tough.

He's a real bro.

I tend to look at it from this perspective: What if a government agent turned rogue and released similar documents highlighting similar activities? In this case, however, it's North Korea, China, or Russia that had a leaker. The issue isn't whether it's legal or not. Corrupt regimes and governments often employ various complex laws to keep people silenced, and in many cases if it wasn't our own government we would applaud people for taking the risks to expose their corrupt government. Unfortunately, when it comes to us, we just accept certain laws at face value and in some cases support them fully, even with the reality being that those laws help support corrupt government practices.

I see his actions as justified. I just hope he leaks more.

If the story is true and he joined Booz Allen Hamilton with the intention of finding things to leak then I think he's a douche who should eat a c*ckmeat sandwich. As opposed to PFC Manning who leaked what he saw as an injustice and didn't wuss out and run to Russia and Hong Kong for asylum.

Well, he is risking his life by exposing the information, so that took some form of bravery to accomplish. Even though most people knew/believed that the government was monitoring us, they probably didn't understand to what extent and at least Snowden helped expose that. We bash on China for their voluntary monitoring program, yet when our own government does it secretly, it somehow isn't a problem. Honestly, I respect him for publicizing the information, risking his life, and trying to accomplish some good in the world, but I'll never regard him as an American hero because he has not reached that level yet. If he is ever brought back to the U.S. he'll get much worse than jail sadly. He'll be mercilessly tortured.