Edward Snowden, the source of the recent leaks about NSA surveillance programs did a one and a half flip double gainer with a twist across the line from ‘potentially justified whistleblower’ to ‘traitorous douchebag who should be convicted by a jury of his peers and hung from the nearest yardarm” when he revealed to newspapers in Hong Kong that the NSA conducts surveillance / computer hacking against Hong Kong and the Peoples Republic of China.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, we’ve fought a shooting war against China, fought at least one war against people supported, trained, and armed by China, and have off-again, on-again been at odds with China in diplomatic, economic, and social circles over the past 65 years or so.  It should come to no-one’s surprise, least of all the Chinese communist party leadership, that our intelligence agencies are keeping tabs on them.

But he didn’t have to confirm it for them, and he certainly don’t need to give them a description of at least one effort to gather intelligence on the Chinese.

You see, every time a particular operation against a foreign power is uncovered, it not only blows the data that operation would have given, but also shows the target an example of where we have an opportunity to learn more about them.  They take that example and compare it to the rest of their military, industry, diplomats, and whatever, find similar circumstances, and figure out ways to either shut down ongoing efforts to exploit them or to prevent future intelligence efforts.

Not to mention that if our intelligence services are using human assets, also known as people, to aid in their efforts, those people have a bad habit of ending up with a 9mm cerebral hemorrhage.  In other words, betraying intelligence operations frequently leads to the murder of human beings.  So much for being a guy who just wants to be a good humanitarian.

I can agree with a lot of what Snowden did when it comes to domestic government surveillance of our citizenry.  Maybe he could have gone to the Inspector General, or maybe to a sympathetic member of Congress, but he went to the press, which some have criticized.  Even then, it has been pointed out that, unlike Bradley Manning, Snowden took steps to make sure that the names of sources weren’t in what he released.  I guess that went out the window once he started talking to his Chinese hosts.

Regardless of the good his earlier revelations may yet bring, this latest trick cannot be justified in any way.  He has endangered our ability to gather intelligence against an unfriendly country, and has possibly put the lives of people who have been helping our country at risk.  For this, I hope he is apprehended, tried, and convicted.