Snowden Shortlisted For Europe's Top Human Rights Award

another random user sends this news from the BBC: "Edward Snowden, the fugitive American former intelligence worker, has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize, Europe's top human rights award. Mr Snowden was nominated by Green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of U.S. surveillance. Nominees also include Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head for demanding education for girls. Former recipients of the prize, awarded by the European Parliament, include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi. Mr Snowden's nomination recognized that his disclosure of U.S. surveillance activities was an 'enormous service' to human rights and European citizens, the parliament's Green group said."

Comments

controlled and targetted?

[Shakrai]

but on reflection, what Snowden has done was controlled, targeted and highly effective

Is that why he leaked national security secrets that have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with domestic American civil liberties?

Whatever one may think of the NSA, spying on foreign countries/actors is perfectly legitimate, it raises no Constitutional questions, and IMHO there was no valid to leak ANYTHING about NSA's foreign SIGINT programs. The damage that Mr. Snowden has done to the American intelligence community is incalculable and WILL cost lives going forward.

If he had limited himself to leaking information about their domestic activities I might have a different opinion of him, but I'm having a hard time seeing how leaking information about NSA's operations against China (just to pick one, there are others...) is anything but providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.