Sure it is fair to give a traitor the benefit of the doubt in not telling his handlers - the Chinese - methods and means - word has it they like the Russians are very understanding about such loyalties ...
Don’t even try to argue that Eddy just decided one day to do what he did all by hisself.
Neither the Chinese nor the Russians would place and help such a spy only to get what anyone could reasonably guess what NSA/DOD/etc are up to. You are very knowledgeable when it comes to intel history but not so much when looking at real world espionage. Those guys do NOTHING for free, as the gist of your argument would have it.
Another clue to Eddy the Snowman’s duplicity lost in all the hubbub around elections and so on is that all previous collections went dark, all our allies stopped sharing; AQ/ISIS et al comms became opaque.
But it doesn't hold water IMHO. At the very least Putin gets a diplomatic publicity win and gets to stick it in Barry's eye. These things are not much to you and me, but on the world stage it is losing face. This probably rattled Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon and the White House more than it should, but that is the way the worldwide bureaucracy operates.
Putin also gets a giant win through uncertainty ( caveat: *if* the reports are true that we do NOT know what, and how much Snowden took ). Now what I mean, is that everytime our guys and his are looking across the negotiating table at each other, their guys are smirking and our guys are wondering what it is they know about us. This is a win for them and I would suggest it alone is worth the price of admission for letting Snowden cool his heels there.
There's other things too. In years past the Soviet dictator helped shore up his authority within his power structure and politburo through things like this ( imagine them laughing over a few vodkas and saying: "Stupid Americans" ). If they could strike fear in our guys, or merely make their guys believe they could, then they are much more respected.
We could do this all day, coming up with scenarios that are reasons that Snowden can hide there safely *without* giving them important data. But, we will just NEVER know. Personally I believe what Snowden has said about his intent and that he is screening the contents. Furthermore, I find it absolutely impossible that a 3rd party contractor in a far remote location has access to anything besides the "ears" of NoSuchAgency ( caveat: unless the Pentagon has gone insane and connected everything together ).
From your last reply I guess we are at odds over Snowden philosophically. And that's fine - this is America. I would hope that he took that into account and expects to be hated and despised and is willing to face that eventually. But you have to at least agree that going to Congress or becoming a "Whistleblower" was obviously out of the question. In the District Of Criminals they are now looking out for themselves, and only themselves. In fact, the main purpose of Government really seems to have evolved into growing and preserving itself at all costs. So his actions make logical sense to me.
I have come full circle myself over this domestic spying. The very few mentions of the power to keep secrets in the Constitution do not justify this in any way. To legitimatize what they are doing *to* Americans would require an Amendment that says The people grant the Federal Government the power to listen to and record and monitor and intercept and decrypt all communications of American citizens, at home and abroad, at anytime, anywhere, for any reason they see fit. And that would barely cover it. It would also have to authorize them to be allowed to pressure every manufacturer of everything for backdoors and trade secrets. We are literally accepting big brother without any authorization whatsoever from the States or the People.
It is in this context that I applaud Snowden. If he gets executed or vanishes in custody then I will praise his sacrifice. He will have done us a great service. That's because there is no way for me to muster up enough to cognitive dissonance to read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and then accept this current situation as anything except tyranny. This is supposedly all about being able to intercept a nuke in a truck parked outside the White House or some guy with a bag of Anthrax, but in actuality it is used for everything from intellectual property theft like DVD's, music and new movie releases, to catching child porn on some creep's computer. If the price of this "security" is to accept 100% penetration into everything then we have failed Eternal Vigilance 101, and frankly we deserve to die.