He was under great personal pressure as a result of the actions of the original criminal (US gov pursuing him and canceling passport etc), and had very limited time and resources of his own.
He could have dumped it all on the net, but instead handed it to big name highly resourced journalists, who were definitely aware of the seriousness of what they'd received.
There's two ways people try to discredit Snowden. The first is the government absolutist way, that no-one can wrong the government even to remedy its own far superior wrongs. The second is the backdoor version of the same: to say yes we get why he did it, but to impose a burden of performance that only a superman could attain in the reality of that situation, falling short of which: "he caused more harm than he prevented".
He wasn't under strong direct pressure from govt until after fleeing with secret docs. The actions he took after that can't justify his theft and flight abroad. The theft and flight abroad, however, were disproportionate relative to the harm that he was suffering from personally (metadata collection, eavesdropping, both of which he had the technical knowledge to protect himself from).
I'm not trying to balance actions against one another in some form of equation to see what the net good is. That doesn't make sense. It reminds me of Dave Chappelle's skit about trying to process rape allegations against Bill Crosby. He was a great comedian. And probably a rapist. Well, Snowden is similarly complicated.
Comparing Snowden's actions with Cosby is disingenuous at best, sorry. Cosby drugged and raped dozens of women. All of Snowden's actions in their entirety were done with positive intent, regardless of any supposed missteps. Completely incomparable.
He was under great personal pressure as a result of the actions of the original criminal (US gov pursuing him and canceling passport etc), and had very limited time and resources of his own.
He could have dumped it all on the net, but instead handed it to big name highly resourced journalists, who were definitely aware of the seriousness of what they'd received.
There's two ways people try to discredit Snowden. The first is the government absolutist way, that no-one can wrong the government even to remedy its own far superior wrongs. The second is the backdoor version of the same: to say yes we get why he did it, but to impose a burden of performance that only a superman could attain in the reality of that situation, falling short of which: "he caused more harm than he prevented".