Is this what you would've done in Snowdon's shoes?
Any major US news publication or the EFF would have put their legal team to work protecting him. He could have fled to a friendly country like France that has strong civil liberty protections. He could have gone to a neutral country like Switzerland. Instead of trying any of these things, he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection - which plays a lot more like an asset coming home than a legitimate whistleblower.
Running away and getting protection from a different rights-violating government that you haven't poked in the eye sounds quite a bit less masochist.
It's also common knowledge he didn't go directly to Russia but had his passport canceled by the US, leading to the Russian airport he was transferring through not letting him leave.
So it's wrong to expose a corrupt government without becoming a martyr? It's better to let the public to be fooled?
Not everyone thinks this way. Sometimes it matters, and sometimes it doesn't.
> he went right to Russia and horse traded information for protection
Do you have a source for the above statement?
It's my understanding that the U.S. revoked his passport while he was en-route to Ecuador, trapping him in Russia. I haven't heard that he gave the Russians any intelligence.
he could not [1]
> Instead of trying any of these things
he did try [1]
> horse traded information for protection
when he was in russia, he had nothing more to give them [1]
