Editorial: Snowden’s Act Less Than Civil Disobedience

Disregard for a moment the content of the information “NSA leaker” Edward Snowden revealed.

Disregard for a moment your personal reaction to Snowden, he of the pole-dancing girlfriend who now speaks only through WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.

Put aside your assessment of the young man, whether you believe he is a patriot, a traitor or a self-important opportunist.

What is most bemusing about this practitioner of civil disobedience is his apparent surprise with how things have gone since he began passing classified information to The Guardian and then identifying himself as the source of that information.

Consider this description of Mr. Snowden in a June 24 New York Times report about his hasty exit from Hong Kong.


His attorney, Albert Ho, told the Times, “He didn’t go out, he spent all his time inside a tiny space, but he said it was OK because he had his computer. If you were to deprive him of his computer, that would be totally intolerable.”

Now Mr. Snowden is believed to be living in a section of the Moscow airport as he searches, with increasing concern we suspect, for a country to accept him.

From this unusual locale, he complains bitterly that the Obama administration has rendered him “stateless,” although U.S. authorities say they have canceled only the validity of his travel documents, not deprived him of citizenship, according to The Guardian. The paper notes the case of a man who lived in the Paris airport for 18 years, but it reports also that Russia’s decision to consider the Moscow airport international space is done more from convenience than law.

Mr. Snowden has applied for asylum to 21 nations, but he withdrew his application to Russia, which agreed to accept him only if he stopped “his work aimed at bringing harm” to the U.S., according to The Guardian. Other countries are not fighting to get Mr. Snowden; nobody wants this hot potato.

In short, Mr. Snowden has found it’s not easy being a leaker.

We are curious as to what he expected to happen.

The key to performing acts of disobedience with integrity is the willingness to accept the consequence that comes with the act.

When Mohandas K. Gandhi led acts of civil disobedience in India in the 1920s and ’30s, he willingly went to jail and stood trial. Remaining committed to his principles, his followers accepted beatings without resorting to violence in return, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation.

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. accepted arrest as the consequence of his “parading without a permit.” Indeed there would be no “Letter from Birmingham Jail” if Dr. King never went to Birmingham jail.

We cannot imagine what Dr. King and the Mahatma would think about Edward Snowden’s “deep dismay” that he might be deprived of his computer.

Mr. Snowden wants to define the terms of the consequences of his action, but the essence of true civil disobedience, the peaceful protest of laws the protester believes are immoral, is the willingness to accept the civil punishment that results.


By seeking to avoid consequence, Mr. Snowden takes what might have been a noble act and degrades it. He does not have Dr. King’s respect for law, and the law will have little respect for him.