This is very true. If Snowden can avoid the Bradley manning treatment, whistle blowers in the future may be more inclined to come forward.
The only outcome which would encourage future whistleblowers is being allowed to live in honor in his own country, like Daniel Ellsberg has been able to. Unfortunately it does not look like any branch of the US government is willing to offer assistance, nor does there appear to be any prospect that either political party will ever embrace that idea, no matter what happens in polls (which currently are slightly against Snowden).
If I lived in an oppressive state then a lifetime of exile would not be too unwelcome.
During the cold war, the USA was somewhere persecuted people fled to. Now it's somewhere persecuted people flee from. While it is not yet as bad as the USSR was, it seems to me that it is sleepwalking to authoritarianism.
Those facts are unlikely to change until we are much farther down the road to authoritarianism than we currently are.
That's just spooky. That is exactly the same thing my friend who moved to Shenzhen said of that part of China.
The only thing left to figure out is if its "worse" in China or just different (in regards to how authority is "threatened").
No government would consider that to be acceptable.
Note: This is no defense of the NSA. However it is dishonest to claim that people who criticize the US government are persecuted and need to flee.
The US is not chasing Snowden because he criticized them. They are chasing him because of the stolen documents.
Just look at the measures taken in order to intimidate or capture Snowden: In effect, the US government grounded the private jet of a foreign head of state. If a similar action was done against the US, it would be considered an act of war. A persecution is exactly what this is, under the plausible (even legal) guise of criminal proceedings.
Tens of thousands of Americans question authority on a daily basis and nothing happens to them. America is still a place where your rights and freedoms are respected quite a bit more than other countries.
What do you think would happen if you questioned authority in, say, Venezuela?
In short, if the action in question does not affect the powers that be from operating as they want to operate, there are no consequences from doing it. If the action challenges the powers that be then - no matter how wrong their actions - the consequences are real.
Those in power will respond to challenges. And shrug off questions.
And yes, that is indeed better than many other countries. (Though I personally felt that the rights and freedoms which I cared about were better protected when I lived in Canada.)
Or to said authority, for that matter.
I am pretty sure that tens of thousands of Venezuelans question authority too. The difference is that it takes less to make the Venezuelan government feel threatened than it takes in the US.
No it's not. That's very melodramatic. A single person who hasn't even been persecuted yet has flown from the US. Maybe he (and others) think he will be persecuted if he returns, but that's something very different from what happened in the eastern bloc during the Cold War.
He is being chased because of his intentional theft of classified government documents. Can you name a country in which that would be legal?
Sorry to have a somewhat real answer to a rhetorical question.
Now consider how he would have been viewed by the US if he'd instead flown to Moscow and applied to Brezhnev for asylum.
To me the more interesting change is that Ellsberg believed (correctly!) that a story like his could go to US media and would get out. Today nobody trusts the US media to report critically on the USA. (Hrm. If the 2000 election were to happen today, once the Guardian began digging up evidence of concrete, massive, and clearly illegal suppression of black turnout in Florida, would that get reported in the NY Times? Or on something that big would they maintain silence again until it was a mere footnote months later about the state of Florida having admitted to it, been sanctioned, and having promised to not do it again?)
Also, compare that fate to what happened to Bradley Manning. Living in Venezuela is way better than solitary confinement.