Breaking the Law to Defend Democracy
So when is breaking the law justified to achieve justice? When is the law less important than the evil being covered up by those who wrote the law to protect themselves? Everyone who has ever served in the Federal Government knows that you destroy your career when you work within the system to correct abuses of power.
I do not know the answer to my own question, but it does seem to me that a fundamental relationship exists between the degree of transparency in government and the justifiability of breaking the law.
There is also a legal response: the ultimate law in the U.S. is the Constitution. If officials violate the Constitution and a bureaucrat or reporter discovers that fact, what is that person's legal recourse? To whom does he report the official violation?
We can slice and dice this all day, but in the end, publicly embarrassing officials who abuse power is pretty much the only hope. You will note that all the brave senators now criticizing NSA domestic spying weren't saying very much until Assange, Manning, and Snowden made all this public.