TREASON OR WHISTLE BLOWING ?

Much has been said lately about Snowden's leak of classified information to the press and this amorphous mass of manipulable criteria we call public opinion is divided in two main groups; one that claims the man is a hero and the other that insists he is a traitor. No doubt the case has shed light on the government's invasion of our privacy and the risk inherent in allowing bureaucrats to take advantage of exceptional junctures to take exceptional measures and erode our freedom. While nothing Snowden said strikes me as unexpected or even out of the ordinary one has to admit the revelations brought a great degree of embarrassment to the Obama administration.

Is whistle blowing a prerogative of the citizens?; of course it is, but you simply do not steal secrets from your government, not matter how much at fault it is, and feed them to the Russians, the Chinese, or the Cubans for that matter. A true hero would have warned Congress, the American press or chained himself to the White House main gate, but as much as we may hate the NSA's flagrant violation of our rights we are still far from the totalitarianism in any of those three countries.

This case is a clear warning to those of us who share a concern about the stalinization of our republic. There is a blurred line beyond which we must not go; otherwise we would be undermining the very spirit of whistle blowing and becoming tools in the hands of foreign powers.