Does Snowden know Venezuela records and broadcasts activists' phone calls?

[ProSense]

40. Consider this

if Snowden, as his supporters believe, did the country a great service, he would have had a much stronger case by staying and facing the consequences. The debate would have remained focused on the NSA's domestic program.

William Binney, Thomas Drake, and Thomas Tamm are whistleblowers who stayed and faced the consequences of their actions. They were not persecuted, they faced prosecution. They are not in jail. In fact, Tamm was the one who exposed Bush's illegal eavesdropping on Americans.

Remember whistleblower Thomas Tamm?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023032225

Even in a worse-case scenario, Snowden would likely have been released on bail:

WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted a State Department analyst suspected of disclosing top-secret information about North Korea to Fox News, the third time the Obama administration has filed criminal charges accusing people of leaks to the news media.

The indictment, dated Aug. 19 and unsealed on Friday, named Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, 43, of McLean, Va., a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor for the State Department. Mr. Kim, who has worked as a high-level foreign affairs analyst for a decade for various federal agencies, is accused of disclosing the information in June 2009 and of lying to the F.B.I. in September 2009.

Mr. Kim, an American citizen, pleaded not guilty on Friday in Federal District Court before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly and was released on $100,000 bond.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/americas/28leak.html