I'm not going to turn in the theif. It is enough to know that people will steal.

(The difference here being that in one case the government is the judge/jury/executioner and in the other it is the realm of public opinion.)

No, it's not that. It's that it may very well be possible to trace this conversation back to a single person and that could easily jeopardize that persons employment.

That is a separate (and I personally think far more valid) argument. My protest was against the argument, not against the outcome.

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html