It definitely wouldn't be a fair trial and I definitely admire what Edward Snowden did to really highlight just how much we've (very wrongly) sacrificed in the name of 'security' that is actually all just bullshit anyway. But at the same time I do have to wonder if maybe he would've gotten people even more outraged by what the government and the NSA has been doing if he hadn't have fled the country to begin with.

In my mind, at least, you can't have the concept of civil disobedience without also highlighting just how unfair the system is - I think it was Henry David Thoreau that wrote about how people campaigning for emancipation would refuse to pay taxes in the belief that that would support a government that endorsed slavery, but allowed themselves to be imprisoned for that 'crime'. The idea was to stick to what was morally right, even if it meant being legally wrong, and allowing yourself to be punished by the legal system to highlight just how morally repugnant the entire thing was.

Obviously whistleblowers are important and I think they should be treated with amnesty (though, it depends on what they reveal, in my opinion). Edward Snowden shouldn't be treated as some sort of fugitive, but at the same time the media concentrates on the 'spectacle', I suppose, of his self-imposed exile as opposed to focusing on the actual issues he revealed and I feel that if were he to be given a trial, it might turn the lens back on what actually matters. Or maybe I'm just being naive (probably am, in fairness).