EDWARD SNOWDEN

Let's face it, the life of a whistleblower is not great. We all say that we want the benefits of what whistleblowers do, namely exposing the shenanigans of those who are in some way in power. But we also have short memories and a tendency to shrug our shoulders. What seems important today is less so in three months' time. Meanwhile, the whistleblower has to resurrect their life in a world where many people treat them as a pariah.

Against that background, the case of Edward Snowden is interesting, and not just because he managed to escape the clutches of an American Government hell-bent on locking him up for a very long period of time. True, he was fortunate in getting help from a Russian Government cynically taking advantage of the case for domestic and international political purposes. But what distinguishes him in my view is the sheer volume of documents he has apparently leaked to the Guardian and others.

We all know that spies spy. But the average citizen (including me) believes that there both is, and ought to be, a limit, either with respect to who is being spied on or with respect to the law of the land. The revelations about the U.S.'s tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel's personal mobile phone and other things are for many people a clear crossing of that line. Germany is a firm ally of the U.S., and Ms. Merkel is hardly a terrorist suspect. If that is not enough to protect her from American snoopings, then what is?

All of which leads me to think that Mr. Snowden is doing all of us more of a service than we first thought. He is not just a disenchanted Government nerd, he really is doing all of mankind a favour. I hope that when all the fuss has died down, he does manage to be able to find a place to live where the Americans won't come after him.  

Walter Blotscher