I saw the short version of it on the NBC Nightly News. Personally, I'm glad he did what he did. Obviously many people will disagree, claim he's a traitor, blah blah blah. The simple fact of that matter is the government's NSA program is blatantly unconstitutional and violates international law as well. Collecting cell phone records without a warrant is a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment.
As Snowden said, he had a very comfortable life as a contractor. He was making $90,000 a year, which is pretty good for someone without a high school diploma. Why leave that all behind, abandon his family, etc. if they really didn't feel strongly about this? It's not as though he was someone with nothing to lose.
Also, I wanted to punch Secretary of State John Kerry when he called Snowden a traitor to his country. This is rich coming from a man who, after returning home from the Vietnam War, testified before Congress himself about the atrocities committed by American troops. A man with effusive praise for Daniel Ellsberg, who using the Pentegon Papers exposed the Johnson administration's blatant use of misinformation to accelerate U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
All of these men are whistleblowers. They all made sensitive information about government national security operations public. All of them were accused of jeopardizing national security and being traitors. One would expect Kerry to have more sympathy. But no. Snowden is somehow different than he or Ellsberg.
Kerry wants Snowden to make a deal, and plead guilty to charges that carry up to 20 years in prison. Did Kerry do time for his political activism? No. Instead he parlayed it into an entire career, using his connections to marry an incredibly wealthy widow and nearly becoming president. It's just hypocrisy on the highest order.
Ellsberg's case is even worse. Nixon was so paranoid about him that he had members of his own administration break into Ellsberg's psychiatrists' office to steal his records and illegally wiretapped his phone without a warrant. The government's behavior was so deplorable that the judge presiding over Ellsburg's trial dismissed all of the charges.
Once again, the federal government has behaved deplorably, and has failed to produce a shred of evidence that the Snowden leaks have compromised national security in any tangible way.