The majority of those supporting Manning/Snowden maintain that neither man did anything wrong. This seems to be a much more reasonable and fair-minded approach.

>"Mr Manning’s public-interest defence is especially thin: he leaked over 700,000 files with little judgment about what harm or good this would do."

I agree - it was irresponsible and unwise, and it may have ultimately harmed the country more than it helped. I think Snowden has generally used his best judgement; we can disagree with what he saw fit to leak, but at least he takes some responsibility for the information he holds.

I also agree that we've gone way too far in restricting liberties. We have a bill of rights for a reason: individual rights the government shouldn't be able to ignore, even when it's inconvenient.