What's the difference between the current whistleblower, Snowden, Reality and Chelsea?

Snowden broke the law and revealed top secret information, the whistle blower fallowed legally recognized process and exposed Trumps crimes and treasonous behavior. That's the difference.

The former all actually witnessed wrongdoing, firsthand, and voluntarily came forward.

So the objective is the same, the difference is in the means.

[quote]So the objective is the same, the difference is in the means.

Well yes but that matter. If two people are running for office say, one guy is winning people over with his ideas while the other has hit men pick off his opponent, then they both had the same objective but different means of getting there. In other words, the ends don't justify the means.

What R1 said.

When the most powerful in the land is your boss and you know is using the institutional power at his disposal to prevent egregious criminality from getting to the people who trusted him enough to vote for him, what do you do?

Watergate was exposed by one brave lawbreaker who knew the institutional process would not be a help but a barrier. Would you say Deep Throat should not have done what he did but followed process? He must have thought a lot about what r1 says. As must have Snowden.

Stop trying to make Snowden a hero OP. He put the country at risk not to mention real people working in the CIA because of his actions. Deep Throat from Watergate didn't put anyone's life in danger. He didn't give away national secrets.

In the ordinary workday situation employees don’t carry whistles; instead, they carry out the instructions given to them by their superiors. But whistleblower protections provide a check on this whole system. Like the red button on a train, activating the whistle (or button) brings the machine to a total halt. Like a safety button, whistleblowing is meant to keep the workplace, or an employer, from going off the legal or moral rails.

The majority of whistleblower cases do not include high-profile executives like the U.S. President or a famous C.E.O. Many never make the headlines beyond, perhaps, their local media.

These and many other employees have raised the alarm through a process in their own organization or with an outside party because they believed they had a moral or legal requirement to speak up. Stopping the workplace train always comes at a cost, and there is usually little reward to be gained for doing so.

Most often, whistleblowing is an act of courage. Always, it slows down the organization or the public surrounding it to take stock—to determine if there is a moral or legal problem that must be addressed directly before the ordinary production or governing process cranks up again. In that sense, whistleblowing is a tremendously important safety check on power, and whistleblowers serve the very institutions whose leaders most often find them to be an annoyance.