Slashdot Mirror
Snowden Seeks International Help Against US Espionage Charges
An anonymous reader writes "Edward Snowden is calling for international help to persuade the U.S. to drop its espionage charges against him. Snowden said he would like to testify before the U.S. Congress about National Security Agency surveillance and may be willing to help German officials investigate alleged U.S. spying in Germany. Snowden is quoted as saying that the U.S. government 'continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense.' He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.'"
The problem is that there are a significant amount of people in the U.S> who believe that some of the things Snowden leaked are harmful to the US.
For example, he leaked that the U.S> was spying on specific Chinese Universities, to determine how they were hacking into our military and industrial computers. Now those universities know how to be more careful. It is unlikely they will stop trying to hack into us.
The problem Snowden has is that even if he "started a conversation" about U.S. intelligence, he still leaked a number of things that could easily be found to be harmful to the U.S. Even if 98% of the things he leaked were good things for the world to know, he will ALWAYS be at risk of being charged for the 2% of the things he leaked that are genuinely bad for the world to know.