It's not "leaking confidential information" if the information is evidence of ongoing criminal activity. Imagine that the government was kidnapping children and grinding them into a paste for use as a new MRE flavor. Would you put the person who told the media about this up for trial on espionage charges? Of course not. You'd use the evidence to convict the people that were grinding up the children.
This is the same thing except on a more abstract level of illegality.
A lot of hyperbole in that statement making it really off-base. You may think it's criminal/illegal activity, but the problem is it's completely within the law we have created. Whether or not it should be legal is a different topic.
The actions from what we've seen so far are completely legal; what Snowden did is not. It's incredibly simple.
> You may think it's criminal/illegal activity, but the problem is it's completely within the law we have created.
That's a completely unsupported assertion. Clearly what the NSA has been up to is compatible with a small secretive framework of laws and courts, but a large part of the outcry is due to the fact that this framework hasn't been publicly subjected to Supreme Court challenges, so the compatibility with the larger body of law and the constitution is fairly uncertain compared to things like normal law-enforcement procedures. (If PRISM et al had been thoroughly tested at the Supreme Court level, there would have to have been a decision as notorious as Dred Scott or Roe v Wade, and a corresponding movement to amend the constitution in order to overturn the Supreme Court. Neither has happened yet.)
> The actions from what we've seen so far are completely legal; what Snowden did is not. It's incredibly simple.
Ah, innocent until proven guilty and all that!
I am not entirely convinced everything we have seen the US do in this case in legal in international terms. By pressuring countries to ignore the asylum process in order to carry out an illegal extradition is already crossing a line. If he was to be extradited it would be breaking international law.
And the US was one of the primary authors of these international laws, treaties and standards of human rights.
There are non-refoulement[1] clauses in international refugee law that 181 countries around the world are bound to, I believe.
In previous cases[2] where people are deported whilst seeking asylum the UNHCR has said:
> UNHCR denounced the move as a violation of the "non-refoulement" policy that prohibits the forced return of asylum seekers to areas where they could face danger – a cornerstone of international refugee protection.
> "We cannot accept that these asylum seekers were deported without a chance to explain their case,"
In my opinion, for the rule of law to stand, the asylum process must conclude before he gets deported.
It isn't that simple. The government's programs are kept secret, even from most of Congress and most of the courts, and certainly from the public. It is very hard to square the sweeping NSA programs with the plain language of the 4th Amendment, which is the highest law of the land.
This is the same thing except on a more abstract level of illegality.