Snowden through four lenses: a reporter, a CIA officer, an FBI agent, a libertarian

There is no single verdict on Edward Snowden. Four people who look at him from four directions come to different conclusions, and what separates them is less the facts than what each one counts first.

Nicole Perlroth, who went through the leaked NSA documents as a New York Times cybersecurity reporter, says he is neither hero nor villain. As a journalist she is grateful that he opened the debate about the limits of surveillance and about secret courts. But she came to the documents after two years of covering Chinese cyber espionage and Russian attacks, and part of her was relieved to find the NSA was as good as she had hoped; for the most part, she says, it was doing traditional espionage. She thinks the public's reaction was a little bit misplaced, that the reporting lacked context about China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and that too many documents were released without care.

Andrew Bustamante, a former covert CIA intelligence officer, considers Snowden a criminal in the eyes of the law and a sad case. He admits few share his view that bulk metadata collection by the NSA kept Americans safer. He says you have no privacy anyway, given what apps and phone companies collect, and that turning the NSA on a president's critics would take secret police and secret courts as well.

Chris Tarbell, a former FBI special agent, calls Snowden a bad person for not following whistleblower rules and for exposing US capabilities, because disclosed methods teach criminals and terrorists to change tactics. He grants that the power can be abused, and says people who abuse it should be punished.

Dave Smith, the libertarian comedian, wants Donald Trump to consider a pardon, which he says would anger the NSA and CIA but signal a real willingness to take on the deep state. Joe Rogan adds that if Snowden exposed illegal activity, only those who want to keep breaking the law should fear him.

The disagreements go beyond the verdict. Bustamante defends the metadata program; Rogan's argument starts from the possibility that what was exposed was illegal, and none of the four sources settles whether it was. Bustamante says privacy is gone and Tarbell says people give it away constantly, while Perlroth speaks of how critical it is. Lex Fridman, who sees Snowden as a symbol of holding the powerful accountable, argues that the point is being able to criticize the government when it matters. Perlroth and Tarbell both cite NSA employees who used their access on girlfriends or ex-girlfriends: for Tarbell it shows that rules exist, for Perlroth it is the exception that sits beside the red tape. Even the defenders have doubts about the institutions. Bustamante calls it a "massive flaw in the system" that the CIA director is a presidential appointee, and Tarbell is troubled by what has come out about the FBI.

What to do with it: ask what the surveillance is used for, and what else was happening at the time. Keep three questions apart: was it legal, was it right, and was it done with care. When someone says abuse would be hard, keep the question from Perlroth's conversation: "if they're not, would we know?" Notice what you already give away, and protect what matters most to you, starting with multifactor authentication and passwords you never reuse. On Snowden himself, Bustamante and Lex Fridman agree to let history decide.