> 1. Ends can not justify means.

If you're responding to this part of my response, please don't quote me out of context. This response contains a complete idea, and is particularly susceptible to looking at only parts of it, but that would be argumentatively lazy on your part, and I won't respond to anyone who does this.

"The ends justify the means" is a perfectly legitimate argument, by itself: we should be choosing our actions based on the results we expect from those actions.

The problem with "The ends justify the means" is that it is almost never correctly applied; people rarely look at the complete ends of the action they are trying to justify.

An example of this is eugenics: if you kill people with genetic disorders, yes, the ends are that you have fewer genetic disorders. However, that's only part of the ends: the complete ends includes a huge amount of suffering, death, and grief. The ends can only justify the means if the ends are desirable, and in the case of eugenics the ends aren't desirable, they're horrific.

In the case of Snowden, the complete ends are a public that's much more aware of our government spying on us, and so far I've come across no compelling evidence of any significant downside. So looking at the complete ends, I don't see much problem with saying that the ends did justify the means in this case.

Note that this is a valid ethical argument, but it's not a legal argument at all. Of course, "the ends cannot justify the means" isn't a legal argument, either, so there's really not a legal discussion occurring here.

> 2. He fabricated auth keys to gain access to confidential material he didn't have access to.

Given the entire problem Snowden was trying to address was that access restrictions were being improperly used to hide information from the American people, this is exactly the point of why he did what he did.

> 3. He shared the information so-gained as soon as he could.

a) This isn't true, he took steps to make sure that it was released by reputable, trustworthy journalists. b) I'm unsure how this makes him a traitor.

> 4. He shared it with geopolitical foes of the United States.

a) This is a necessary side effect of sharing with the American public, and I'll point out that you're very much treating the American public as a geopolitical foe if you don't acknowledge that fact. b) Any serious threat to the US is sophisticated enough to get around surveillance with simple, freely-available tools. Pervasive surveillance mostly affects the innocent.

> 5. Many reasonable people recognize Wikileaks' objectives are well-aligned with Russia's and feel strongly they are collaborators.

ALL reasonable people recognize that Snowden did not leak to Wikileaks. This isn't even an honest point, and you should be ashamed that you repeated it.

> 6. My knowledge is limited here, but does Snowden claim he used any of the actual, legal whistleblower processes before escaping to Julian Assange? My understanding is that he did not.

What on earth are you talking about? Snowden did not "escap[e] to Julian Assange". This is just a lie.

There were a number of people who tried to point out some of the same problems as Snowden through proper channels[1]. The results of this were that they were silenced, without producing any change. History shows us that the legal channels are a tool for surveillance organizations to identify whistleblowers and silence them before they can do any good, rather than a legitimate way to identify illegal activity by surveillance organizations.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-...

EDIT: I accidentally a word.