“I don’t think that [Edward] Snowden was a patriot,” Barack Obama said in 2013 after the former NSA contractor leaked revelations of mass surveillance to a small group of journalists.Obama’s argument then—one that has been made many times since—was that Snowden had legal channels available to him to address his concerns, which would have protected the classified information in his leaks and, by extension, U.S. national security. In particular, Obama said, Snowden could have made use of formal whistleblower procedures within the U.S. government. “I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection …read more
Source:: The Atlantic
