In a New Year’s Day editorial in The New York Times argued that given the value of the classified documents on domestic spying stolen from the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden has done the nation a great service and should not face “a life of permanent exile, fear and flight.” The Times wrote that in conducting mass surveillance of phone calls, the N.S.A. broke several federal privacy laws and undermined encryption sytems of the Internet thus damaging private businesses that bank on security. (The New York Times, January 1, 2014)
Mac Boot in Commentary, January 2, 2014, called the Times editorial “irresponsible, unconvincing and pernicious.” Boot writes that Snowden endangered our country with his disclosures and disputed the whistleblower label, “What we have here is not a case of ‘whistle-blowing,’ as the Times disingenuously claims, but a case of a young, arrogant, headstrong techie with a libertarian bent and a taste for fame who has taken upon himself the responsibility of deciding which intelligence programs the U.S. government may carry out and which it may not. A true whistleblower, like Daniel Ellsberg, stays to face the consequences of his actions–he does not flee to hostile foreign capitals.”
United States senators expressed diverse views of the issue of granting leniency to Snowden with Republic Senator Rand Paul saying he favored a stiff sentence but something less than death or life in prison. Democratic Senator Charles Shumer was for some form of clemency. (The New York Times, January 5, 2014, by Brian Knowlton)
In the meantime, Dan Gillmor, Nieman Journalism Lab, December 20, 2014, wrote about the “Snowden effect,” that journalists have used the revelations to collaborate in relentlessly reporting a story of great impact over a sustained period of time. Gillmor applauds the coverage, “…the journalists and organizations have paced themselves in revealing new information every week or two, in a drumbeat that reveals one stunning piece of news after another.”