There's one very key reason that traitors, spies, 'turncoats', and others have been been so harshly punished throughout history (and present). It entails a viol

There's one very key reason that traitors, spies, 'turncoats', and others have been been so harshly punished throughout history (and present). It entails a violation of good faith and trust. That has nothing to do with 'tribalism'. Compare your reaction to the notion of a person killing a stranger to steal their watch, and another person killing their coworker to steal their watch. Exact same crime which is absurdly vile in itself, yet one is somehow vastly more repulsive. And so I do fully support Snowden but only because the tremendous magnitude of bad behavior he revealed compensates for his treachery in doing so. By contrast I think individuals like "Reality Winner" simply lack ethics. She violated trust on what seemed to have been a very poorly conceived whim to reveal something of relatively minimal benefit to the public good. Indeed checking out the Wiki to see what came of her case I'm rather unsurprised to find that she apparently wrote in her diary of support for Bin Laden and the Taliban. [1] In military and such organizations this is even more true as individuals take numerous oaths. And one who would break an oath without very substantial reason, is a person the world would be much better off without. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner