More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United S

More like "USA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, much of U.S. population says," I'd say. I suppose you and I meet different subsets of the United States population in our daily lives. I am on record here on HN as having participated in the Take Back the Fourth protest in Minneapolis about overreaching NSA surveillance. I was not afraid to go out in public in view of TV cameras and the police (the protest location was a plaza across the street from the headquarters of the Minneapolis police deparment, and I saw officers with cameras overlooking the protest location) to indicate that I think governmental surveillance, if it occurs at all, should be according to law, and strictly limited by law. That said, I don't treat Snowden as a hero, and I hope no one else in the United States emulates him, ever. He would have done a lot more good for humankind by increasing the NSA's ability to conduct surveillance in China and in Russia (the two countries that have protected him so far) and in central Asia in general. And what has most struck me as I have conversations with American adults of approximately my age (birth years in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) who remember more history is that they are mostly very eager to see Snowden prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which would probably mean spending the rest of his life in prison. Yes, people choose where they work. And some people remember not to stab their co-workers in the back when they go to work. I have never chosen to work for NSA, and I would be glad to see NSA have more effective oversight from Congress and a more limited role in data-gathering. But the United States (like every other country in the world) needs some intelligence-gathering capabilities, and I seem to be joined in my daily activities by a lot of Americans who think that Snowden didn't help anyone by revealing official secrets and that he has a very misguided set of priorities about which governments to oppose. My morale decreases to know that anyone who was contracting for NSA wasn't checked out well enough to detect that tendency to treachery in advance. The day the news broke that Edward Snowden had left Hong Kong, I was out of town at a soccer tournament with my daughter. The parents of her teammates, mostly younger than I am, heard me announce that news, and when one parent asked, what Snowden's destination was, another said, "Gitmo?" with a smile that indicated that he thought Snowden belongs there. I find that reaction quite commonplace among Americans I know. AFTER EDIT: I see the downvotes indicating disagreement are already coming here, and that is not a surprise here on Hacker News, but do we have strong evidence that the general opinion of the American public is united in supporting the HN community view of Snowden's conduct as an NSA contractor? That's one factual question worthy of factual discussion here, whether you agree with my opinion or not. AFTER FURTHER EDITS: I appreciate the replies to my comment, practicing free speech to help me understand other people's perspectives. I would say that it's quite possible to be a genuine whistleblower without disclosing the degree of operational information that Snowden disclosed. And it is possible--it has been done--to decry current NSA practice and still stay in the United States, as some NSA officials have done in the last few years. I'll check the polling data kindly shared in one reply. I'll note that Americans my age and older (well above the modal or median age of HN participants) have multiple sources of information through which to form opinions on this issue, and don't rely solely on governmental statements or influence from political leaders to make up our minds on these issues.