Edward Snowden, Man of the Year.
What I find interesting is that Snowden seems progressively more reasonable in all these interviews — and all the claims made about him being reckless, treasonous, negligent, etc. all seem to simply have been fabrications.
No surprises when your negative PR comes from the world’s most powerful government. I encourage you to read this, because he if anything comes across as more heroic.
I’ll just leave you with his final quote:
“If I defected at all,” Snowden said, “I defected from the government to the public.”
#heroes #pardonsnowden
A Pun Involving Travel 
That’s true – the longer the story has been out the more reasonable he comes off. However, there is data he released that caused damage that seems unrelated to his cause, e.g. the spying on German and Brazilian heads of state. His behavior does indicate he’s inherently well intentioned, such as the irony of the safeguards he suggested years ago being implemented immediately after he left.
The NSA has over 30,000 employees, and with behavior like this and security measures as lax as they were it was a ticking time bomb. Who in their right minds would have thought programs of this size and natture would have been kept secret? And the fact that specifics such as who was being watched were available to Snowden who did not have a need to know indicates a lower level of security than the average, large silicon valley company implements. I can’t even look up logs on my own personal IP address else I could be caught and fired for cause on the off chance I was snooping on someone else at my home, even by accident (e.g. forgetting that someone else shares an IP). And if a log isn’t critical to my job I don’t have access, period. How is it Snowden had access to such an eclectic set of files when none of them have anything to do with his job?
Snowden’s motives are likely pure, but the jury is still out on his actions. And motives are irrelevant on an international scale. From the tech perspective he did us one favor and one disfavor. There’s a spotlight on theft of customer data, but we’ve lost the moral authority against the Chinese hacking groups. And now that the U.S. is actively arguing that friends spy on friends what government isn’t going to start a hacking program against us? After all, we demonstrated and then clarified in public statement that that’s what friends do.
If I were a Chinese intelligence operative looking for a way to protect my flailing attempt at a “clandestine” information warfare startup theb Snowden would have been my ideal asset. The NSA may have built this time bomb, but Snowden detonated it with minimal attempts to defuse it and we could be paying for it for decades. Whether or not he thought he was right, the most extreme action he could have taken without unreasonably harming the U.S. would have been to take the data, put it on a USB without keeping any copies, and then leaving it on the White House front door step threatening the release of of copies if the behavior didn’t change. And even that would have been insanely risky as the USB stick would have left his control.
Had he done that though there’d have been no public spotlight, and no potential for vindication. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the high speed bullet train there is the need to appear well intentioned.
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