No, there is actually a legal process. People going outside of that process are breaking the laws. It doesn’t help when the system is corrupt from above (Clapper, Brennan,etc) but those in the business go into the business very clearly understanding the obligations of protecting the sources and methods, and the consequences of willfully violating that obligation. Again, Snowden compromised sources and methods that made it harder to track terrorists, harder to prep our troops to go do their mission and come home safely, and make Americans at home less safe. Again, not the act of a hero or patriot. Who exactly did Snowden attempt to legally express his concerns to before he downloaded basically everything he could using his bosses stolen password?
Magnum, you bring up interesting points. Could he have gone to others if he thought the entire system was corrupt? Where did Epstein go to be protected? I actually asked a similar question in
this thread about where the prison guards could have gone. Interesting comments.
If you don't trust anyone up the chain of command, where do you go? Now, that may be extreme paranoia but it's certainly not without precedent. Epstein is the case in point. Are whistleblowers really protected? Supposedly they are. No, unfortunately, there are still two tiers of justice in this land and I'm afraid any low level whistleblower would have just faded into obscurity...or worse.
All the political blowhards always use the phrase "be held accountable," but very very few rarely are.
I've been ambivalent about Snowden since it came to the scene. I was working at Ft. Meade when it happened (other side of the base). Interesting, when you talked with people liberals and conservatives alike, you really couldn't guess which side of the tracks they came down on regarding Snowden and his whistleblowing. Could he have done differently? Maybe, but how? The only reasonable answer that I have heard since then is that he could have gone to a cleared lawyer in the DC area.
Just as an aside, have they stopped the illegal snooping on Americans? I honestly do not know.
You know more details about the legal system and the laws he broke as whistleblowing. I can’t comment on what would have happened to him if he went some more legal way. At the end, both things are true. He broke laws that were there to fight enemies and protect our own. Yet he exposed a very corrupt government using laws against the true owners of this places, Us, the People. I think that is quite a shade of gray.