This is some mental gymnastics right here. Also this is coming from the very NSA that got outted. They're not going to give any admission to having given Snowden no other alternative, or they've no leg to stand on.
To me, the NSA confirming Snowden voiced concerns is confirmation that he didn't decide to just leak documents haphazardly - now, we can conjecture about what NSA response he would have considered to be enough, but he at least voiced concern before taking matters into his own hands.
The NSA will never acknowledge that they left him no avenue other than leaking - that would place him squarely as a noble whistleblower, who only went rogue when left no other choice (and, not at all a traitor).
Edit: since I can't reply to ikeboy below, I'll do it here - as others have pointed out, it doesn't matter that he leaked more than you think was appropriate, since everyone has a different measure for that. He also gave it to people far more qualified than himself to parse through - their choice to publish is not within his control. I'm sure you would have done differently, but this is what it is - we're better off for his actions, full stop. The rest is background noise.
You make three points in your reply. All seem to be flawed.
1. "Different people think differently, therefore your thoughts are wrong" is invalid. People thinking something is morally permissible does not make it so.
2. Delegating responsibilities to others makes you responsible if they mess up. When you're doing something as sensitive as Snowden did, you better own your mistakes, and don't trust people who have agendas.
This wasn't an isolated incident.
3. I'm not sure if his actions are better overall. There's little tangible utility in having less surveillance. It's mostly in things like "you're slightly less likely to turn into a suppressive regime". It's not clear that outweighs the negative aspects.
But even if it was overall better, that doesn't make him good under standard ethics.
Or would you support a firefighter that saved ten lives, then went out and murdered five people? If not, you must not be using a total good metric.
Even if he had no choice, he certainly didn't have to leak everything without the time to go over it. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, he's leaked stuff that were completely legal, i.e. the US spying on other countries.
I don't think I did? Above I pointed out that the article used to claim the NSA admitted that Snowden tried to go through official channels doesn't really support that. I don't see any response to that point.
Instead, themartorana assumes that the NSA did admit that, and then based an argument on that assumption. My reply was based on that further argument, and in particular the notion that Snowden had no choice, but the assumption was never justified.
