The reason petitions like this are important is that ultimately, the fate of whistleblowers must rest in the hands of the people. The government <i>must</i> prosecute leakers; failure to do so would invite rampant leaking, placing essential secrecy in the hands of every single individual with access to confidential information. The key question about a leak is: does the value of the information being public outweigh the cost to national security? The ultimate arbiter of this question can only be the people. The executive branch is too invested in maintaining security; the judicial branch is charged with enforcing the law, not with making policy judgments; and the legislative branch, while it can be very influential, has (at least in the US) no direct control over the fate of any particular whistleblower.<p>So the only way to keep a whistleblower out of prison has to be by the sheer weight of public opinion. There isn't any other way and there never can be. This is one responsibility we cannot delegate to our elected representatives, because it directly contradicts other responsibilities we have placed on them.<p>So, if you believe, as I do, that we are better off for Snowden's revelations -- that we desperately need to have a national conversation about what our government is doing to protect us, and whether the price of that is worth paying; that the material Snowden has leaked has been essential in bringing that conversation into focus and drawing attention to it; and that the damage to national security is minimal -- then I urge you to sign this petition.