EDWARD SNOWDEN: Hero or Traitor?

Edward Snowden is 29 years old, a former CIA technical assistant and current employee of military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.  He went to the Guardian and the Washington Post newspapers and spilled national security secrets that he had promised not to divulge. He had to promise in order to get his top-secret security clearance.

The top clearance doesn’t seem to be what it once was.  I read the other day that there are over 85 million people with the top clearance.  I can’t understand why that number is so high.  Back in the 60s when I had one, that number was probably more like 85 hundred.  85 million is hard for me to imagine.
  
Snowden had access to an extraordinary amount of data as a freelance contractor because the government is focused on collecting and sharing everyone’s information at a frenetic pace without the real safeguards they claim are in place.  The more information they collect, the greater the number of people who will have access to the data. 
  
I cannot decide how I feel about this.  I don’t know if Snowden is a hero or a traitor but I am glad he leaked the information.  It seems to be something the public should know about.  The government has grown too large.

The government officials, both right and left, are saying that this leak is very dangerous but the only obvious danger so far, that I can see, is that it points out just how abusive our government has become.

That being said, Snowden did violate an oath. On the other hand, he is a whistleblower leaking information the public should know about.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, whom I have a lot of respect for, says Snowden guilty of treason.  http://www.wlsam.com/common /page.php?pt=Bolton:+NSA+leaker+Edward+Snowden+is+guilty+of+treason&id=45663&is_corp=0

Maybe I just don’t have enough information at this time, but I find it hard to understand why the government has the need, or the right to collect and store everyone’s Internet information.

This is the same government that couldn’t even respond to two warnings from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  The same government that didn’t notice e-mail exchanges between Anwar al-Awlaki and the Ft. Hood terrorist, Nadal Hassan.  

Somehow I can’t help but believe that our government’s desire to snoop into our e-mail and video exchanges has nothing at all to do with national security.  I think something much more sinister is going on.

What do you think? I don’t know what to think.