#Snowden. Hero or Traitor?

It's complicated, but I'm more on the traitor side.

At USA Today, "Is Snowden a traitor or a public servant?"

How you view Edward Snowden probably has a lot to do with how much you care about the threat of terrorism and how much you care about online privacy.

Hero? Traitor? Or someone in between?

How you view Edward Snowden, who exposed two sweeping U.S. online surveillance programs, probably has a lot to do with which you fear more — terrorist bombers or government snoopers.

Snowden's admission that he was the one who'd released evidence of the top-secret programs — one of the most sensational leaks of classified material in U.S. history — expanded an already blistering debate over the clash between national security and online privacy.

With Snowden's assistance, The Guardian and The Washington Post have recently published a series of top-secret documents detailing the government surveillance programs. One gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records while searching for possible links to suspected terrorists abroad; the second allows the government to tap into U.S. Internet companies' data to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

Who is Ed Snowden? That depends on who's asking.

From Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, whom Henry Kissinger called "the most dangerous man in America," to Wikileaks dumper Bradley Manning, on trial accused of high crimes, Americans' views of their whistle-blowers always have depended on their own personal politics.

"We've seen this again and again," said Stephen Kohn, director of the National Whistleblowers Center and a lawyer who has defended whistle-blowers.

He said public support for a whistle-blower usually is tied more to a political issue — the Vietnam War, in Ellsberg's case — than to the rights of whistle-blowers or the issue of whistle-blowing.

Kohn said some people who might support Snowden's actions in principle are so concerned about terrorism "they'll say, at the end of the day, you can't have civil servants or contractors acting in this way." Those primarily worried about online privacy are more sympathetic.

Well, I can relate to principle, although Snowden's a tool of the left --- and those people have been harming U.S. security since long before the war on terror. Screw 'em.

PREVIOUSLY: "Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: 'Bring Back the Death Penalty' for Traitors Like Edward Snowden."