Snowden stole 1.7 million classified documents from NSA servers through internal hacks. That would get you tailed and tracked. He must have felt it was worth the effort to live out his days in socialist Russia. Also that he planned the leaks for months and was able to leak it out slowly to reporters must have angered the NSA and so they want him prosecuted to the full extent. That Russia is housing him is a sore spot for the U.S.
I find it interesting that his story about the U.S. spying on other countries and especially Germany is not stacking up in a court of law as the evidence and proof is not there.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged him with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. His passport was also revoked and so after he was able to live in a Moscow airport, he was granted asylum in Russia and lives in a undisclosed location with his girlfriend.
I don’t think the guy was bright enough to understand the consequences of what he was doing and what it meant for him and nationals ecurity. He seems to have figure he would just be a hero of some sort. But this article claims a lot of what he was saying was bunk and 900,000 of the documents he stole were not intelligence related. So the guy didn’t know what he was doing just wanted to expose the NSA any way he could.
> I don’t think the guy was bright enough to understand the consequences of what he was doing and what it meant for him and nationals ecurity. He seems to have figure he would just be a hero of some sort. But this article claims a lot of what he was saying was bunk and 900,000 of the documents he stole were not intelligence related. So the guy didn’t know what he was doing just wanted to expose the NSA any way he could.
I think that’s pretty close and as good an assessment as to his motivations as any.