There have been couple of interesting articles about Edward Snowden recently. The first reports that a year after the event a majority of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing. I don’t know for sure but I’d be willing to bet that even more non-Americans believe that.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post has an amusing article on the U.S. Government’s feckless attempts to get Snowden back from the Russians. Those efforts consisted mainly of repeated, ineffective pleadings to the Russian government that they send him home.
Although it was widely recognized within the working group trying to get him back that the best hope of doing so was for Snowden to leave Russia for a third country, they effectively foreclosed that possibility by intercepting the Bolivian president’s plane based on nothing but hope that he might be on it. That step convinced Snowden to stay where he was.
It’s still too early to say how history will judge Snowden but his actions have already affected the playing field. In America, the House of Representatives have voted overwhelmingly to ban the NSA from inserting backdoors into communication systems, a good first step. On the other hand, in Britain Theresa May is arguing for more surveillance. I don’t know enough about British politics (or any politics for that matter) to gauge whether or not that will fly. One can only hope not.
It will be interesting to see where we are a year from now.