@Call_Me_Jay Of course he released the information (to the reporters, that is). Show me one place where I have denied that. I was making a very specific response to a very specific point. If you look back, @Lightlyseared claimed that “you don’t give info like that to reporters and not expect them to publish it.” This point was made in regards to the information that was published accidentally (as opposed to the stuff that Snowden and his journalist contacts released on purpose). My point is that this isn’t a very good criticism when made about the pieces of information that were published by accident.
@Lightlyseared “Just because they were idiots and published it doesn’t excuse the fact that there was no reason to give them that information in the first place.”
The problem is I disagree that there was no reason to give them the information in the first place. Snowden only handed over documents he thought were relevant to the public interest (with instructions to redact those parts that were particularly sensitive). The problem is that some news outlets failed to redact the documents properly.
Note that I am not saying Snowden acted perfectly. I think there are legitimate criticisms of some of his actions. He could have redacted the documents himself, for instance (though it is possible he was not in a position to do so or that Greenwald convinced him not to in order to get the story published). My position is only that—on balance—what he did was for the public good and is not deserving of legal punishment at this point.
“It’s very hard to accept his argument that he was leaking info as a whistleblower when most of the info he leaked was on legitimate operations.”
Now I wonder if we are talking about the same thing. At first, it seemed like you were complaining about the information that was released accidentally. Here it seems that you might have a wider definition of “legitimate operations” than I do. I think that everything purposefully released was fair game under the circumstances.
“The fact that some of the info he leaked happened to be on suspect operations appears to be nothing more than happy coincidence given that he’s leaked just about every sensitive document he came across in his entire career.”
This is false. Only a small percentage of the documents Snowden took have been released. He claims to have been very careful in which documents he shared. The problem is that many of the documents that contained relevant information also contained more sensitive information that was not redacted properly.