You mean, guys and girls like Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, William Binney, Jesselyn Radack, etc.? Do you have any idea what they sacrificed to be whistleblowers?
Sorry for the girls. Also included
. I dont rly recognize all of the names u posted. Maybe coz im not American ?
These are all whistleblowers; that is, they all denounced abuse or illegal conduct in the organizations they worked in, or had access to.
A good portion of them tried to do so through the hierarchy initially and were ignored. When they saw no other way to deal with the situation other than going to the press, trusting whistleblower protection laws, they found themselves fired, facing criminal charges, persecuted, some jailed, silenced and pretty much tortured like Chelsea Manning, while most of the wrongdoings they exposed are still being ignored by authorities to this day.
In this context, I don't really find it surprising that Snowden has chosen to reveal the information he had access to from outside the area of influence of the US; had he done otherwise, he would still be in solitary confinement "waiting trial" (read, this is a form of torture), and unable to defend his position and why he took the actions he did.
EDIT: further, and as beetcoin pointed out, he left his family, girlfriend, career, any possibility of returning to the US, his reputation (which, at least in the US, is constantly attacked by the media), and will have to live with fear of being either assassinated, deported, or kidnapped for the rest of his life. And people think he did it for the fame?
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