vicndabox: "Apparently 62% of Americans believe it is {PRISM is a reasonable search}.  I would assume a lot of them are over 10."

... when we invaded Iraq. And I daresay that a sizable majority of Americans supported Executive Order No. 9066 and Public Law 503-1942 during the Second World War.

So, given that the majority isn't always right in its initial collective assumptions, and further is rather notorious for changing its collective opinion, I'd offer that 62% is a rather flimsy proposition upon which to rest your argument.

FYI
This year in the US, more people where killed by kids younger than 6, than by terrorist.  It's 11-4.

Sixty-nine percent of Democrats say terrorism investigations, not privacy, should be the government's main concern.

But I think you already knew that, and just decided to try yo construct a little box you thought I wouldn't be able to get out of, and no one else would be able to see through.

When news broke in late 2005 that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping without warrants -- surveillance that was authorized by President George W. Bush -- Democrats were not happy campers. More than six in 10 (61 percent) Democrats said the practice was "unacceptable" in a Washington Post-ABC News poll shortly after the story broke.

But Democrats have changed their tune in the wake of new disclosures that the NSA is tracking millions of phone records under President Obama. According to a new Post-Pew Research Center poll, fully 64 percent say the agency's latest program to access phone records is "acceptable," which is 27 percentage points higher than their tolerance for the NSA's probes when polled in 2006.

Republicans have shifted as well, but in a predictably different direction: 75 percent were OK with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program in 2006, but a bare 52 percent majority says the NSA's current phone tracking program is acceptable.

My speculation about his being annoyed at being asked a lowly IT support question comes from the inflated view he seems to have of himself, his duties, and his importance. He said he had been a spy all his life! What! Gimme a break. He and Greenwald are two peas in a pod.

Thomas Edison had three months of formal schooling.

Benjamin Franklin dropped out of school at the age of ten.

Bill Gates dropped out of college.

Albert Einstein dropped out of high school, failed the entrance exam to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and finally got in after he got his high school diploma.

John D. Rockefeller dropped out of high school.

Walt Disney never finished high school.

Richard Branson quit school at 16.

George Burns left school in the fourth grade.

Charles Dickens left school at the age of 12.

Elton John never finished school.

Ray Kroc (McDonald's) dropped out of school at 15.

Harry Houdini left school at the age of 12.

Ringo Starr dropped out of school at 15.

I'm sure there are others - I got this list here.

Since doing your own research before hitting the keyboard doesn't seem to be your thing, I'll make it easy for you (bold is mine):

By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

[snip]

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

The list of countries with diplomatic relations but no extradition treaty is bleak at best.

I would say Hong Kong is easily the best choice unless he wants to be forced back to the US for sham US national security trial.

This is just plain sad whern you consider what Snowden revealed:

Hong Kong is not a sovereign country. It is part of China -- a country that by the libertarian standards Edward Snowden says he cares about is worse, not better, than the United States.

I guess he is in the 'no big deal' camp in regards to the crap the US Government has been doing post-9/11.  That statement is how this garbage is kept secret, fools who think it's all about them and the rest of us can suck it.

And this:

"There are dozens of stories generated by the documents he provided, and we intend to pursue every last one of them," Greenwald said.

In a democratic system, the majority rule (with minority rights.)  The dilemma of the individual who disagrees with his/her government as a matter of conscience is not a new dilemma.  See Thoreau & his understanding (along with R.W. Emerson) that there are consequences from acting at variance with the law of the land (in that case, taxes, as I vaguely recall) and his brave action in facing the consequences. See the broader, philosophical discussion about majority/minority rule (when a majority is "wrong") in his essay "On Democracy," wherein he openly discusses the worth of the system, nonethess.  For ancient history, read the play "Antigone" about the conflict between laws of man & laws of morality.  And, of course, the Twentieth Century is replete with examples of "conscientious objectors" in wartime situations--wherein the obligation is to follow the law of the land, no matter the offsetting morality presented by unjust war.