slightly off-topic. how do you think snowden will be remembered in 10 years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
Rather than being up there with this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
And also I'd be wary of setting MLK as a golden standard- I'd say his image is very whitewashed, and very much used in ways that he himself would have opposed (ie: all the kids who are obliquely taught that he "fixed" racism)
Most British whistleblowers wrong-footed themselves with 9/11 or decided they were Jesus, they didn't need the media to make fools of them. I don't think that what's his name again? will make this mistake. However, there is a 'now what?' aspect to the story, there is no uprising from the masses, marches on Washington or anything troubling for the authorities.
In some ways Snowden has helped formalise the spying arrangements, it is now just a fact of life like having CCTV everywhere. The social contract has just been clarified.
Also, Snowden did one act, albeit a lot of planning and hard work went into it. He is not recognised as a writer or a public speaker (yet). His babysitting arrangements mean he cannot flourish that way to easily.
At the very least, he's going to be at least as well regarded as some combination of Deep Throat and Daniel Ellsberg. He might actually end up as the Rachel Carson of the issue.
There's an outside chance he could be the John Brown.
There are a few axes of comparison: effectiveness of his action, and "goodness" of his motivation. They're not completely orthogonal, but if he turns out to have been an (unwitting?) SVR asset, or if a big terrorist incident happens which includes comsec/opsec derived from the Snowden leaks, he's probably doomed on both. But I don't think that's likely.
Addendum: I just saw the mention of John Brown. I tried to tip toe around the issue originally but with Brown's name being mentioned it is the elephant in the room. Hopefully Snowden will not join John Brown or Rev. Dr. King among the list of those that died in the service of social action.
[^1]: If he does pen something like Letter from a Birmingham jail I hope he leaves instructions with his lawyer/estate to not be fascists about enforcing copyright protections on the work.
Another interesting question is timing. If Snowden had happened in December 2002 (so, no elections, and the programs well underway), he probably wouldn't have the level of support we have today. Before the Iraq War, there was certainly a lot more support of the GWoT among even "reasonable" people. I remember launching an anonymous remailer late on 9/11 or 9/12 and it really seemed like the end for people caring about privacy. If MLK had happened much earlier, it probably would have been a lot more difficult for him, too.
With Snowden, I think we're a bit late (in time for the elections of 2008 or 2012 would have been great; the financial collapse might have been a necessary precondition for distrust of institutions though) -- a decade more on the same trajectory would have been a lot worse, and IMO probably irreversible.