Is Edward Snowden a selfless whistleblower, or a traitor?

The former NSA contractor says he did nothing wrong

The Hawaiian home where Snowden lived with his girlfriend.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Anita Hofschneider)

Former CIA computer tech Edward Snowden was living a dream life — a $200,000 a year job, sharing a home in Hawaii with his girlfriend — until he decided to leak top secret documents to expose the National Security Agency's sweeping telephone and internet spying programs. Snowden says the NSA surveillance threatens "our freedom and way of life," so he felt it was his duty to sound the alarm. Now, he's holed up in Hong Kong, and never expects to return home a free man.

Social media lit up Monday with posts hailing Snowden as a hero for sacrificing his cushy life to expose the snooping. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says Americans owe Snowden a debt of gratitude for putting the cause of privacy ahead of his own self-interest. The Guardian, a British newspaper to which Snowden leaked top secret documents, says he "will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers." But is Snowden really a hero?

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.