Thomas Drake was acquitted of all charges except one misdemeanor
He revealed, nearly a decade ago, basically exactly what Snowden did. There was no international manhunt, no dancing jilted girlfriend, no breathless reporters standing outside of airport hotels, no éminence grise in Brazil expounding on the death of democracy; also there were (almost) no Congressional hearings, public outcry, or consequences of his equally-damning leaks (one of the few consequences was that Congress passed a law making PRISM legal).
I'm still trying to figure out why. Was the "gonzo leaking" aspect of Snowden's story what it took to get people to pay attention? Is Internet data that much more important to us now than it was a decade ago? Did people finally realize how much of their lives is online? (Dare I ask) is it the Fear of a Black President (no, DUers, I'm not talking about you)? Was it the scale of Snowden's leaks, and Greenwald's "drip" strategy in releasing them, along with the curiosity about what else is out there? Did Manning's leak prime the engine for the public caring about leaks?
The bizarre part of this to me is that what Drake revealed was black-letter-law illegal, and in the intervening years Congress passed some pretty horrible laws that made what Snowden revealed (much of it, at least) legal. So why the difference in the public reaction to out-of-the-blue illegal acts (yawn) and, a decade later, acts that Congress had specifically made legal because of what Drake did?
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