re: #11 iossarian

To be even more specific, you could argue that “civil disobedience” usually implies that you allow yourself to be arrested and charged, if and when you break the law.

When we were practicing civil disobedience back in the day, we weren’t particularly committing criminal acts. For instance, many of us “sat-in”, such as in a public area like Lafayette Park in DC, and were told to move on by the police, which some of us refused to do. We were disobeying a direct order from the police, even though we sat in a place we were, by law, allowed to be, and we were arrested, booked and jailed. Some of us also practiced ‘passive resistance” which meant the police had to physically pick us up and carry us to the paddy wagon.

Our arrests, like those of many who practice civil disobedience, were thrown out, and our bonds were refunded. Neither the judges or we saw those acts as “criminal”.

Now, if I had broken into a govt office to steal something, that would have been a criminal act. And some did commit criminal acts. And still do. I think that if Snowden had gone to the right people in the NSA and told what he thought was happening and documented it, got no results, then consulted an atty, or a member of Congress and got someone to assist with a public inquiry, I would have no problem with that. Instead, he did nothing of the sort, but merely stole what he wanted, which was planned in advance, and IMHO, did it for some kind of profit or reward.