Okay, so let's get to my main quibble here. You say that Z = X + delta_X. I specifically disagree with this statement, assuming that Z == "Snowden's actions" and X == "Civil Disobedience". Snowden's actions no more resemble Civil Disobedience than shooting a man or robbing a bank; all of these involve breaking a law, but only one of them involves breaking a law that the perpetrator believes to be unjust, in the hopes that their defiance will inspire people to strike down the law.
I don't know what this jibber-jabber about "indirect civil disobedience" is. I agree that a lot of people say Z looks a lot like X. In fact, my entry into this thread consisted of saying "Z does not look like X at all". They are so different, in my mind that applying delta X is like saying "imagine that instead of leaking documents and fleeing the country, he had not leaked documents, but instead sat at a segregated lunch counter, and instead of fleeing the country, he calmly complied with the police and spent the night in jail".
I agree with all of your points about Civil Disobedience itself; and you beat me to quoting King's Birmingham Jail letter by the barest of fractions of hairs. If you choose to, say, not pay taxes, and when the government gets wise, you skip town to avoid paying, this is not civil disobedience; even if you chose to not pay taxes to specifically protest the tax itself. But this does not even barely resemble what Snowden has done, so I do not concede that Y is necessary or even relevant to the justification.
I don't know what this jibber-jabber about "indirect civil disobedience" is. I agree that a lot of people say Z looks a lot like X. In fact, my entry into this thread consisted of saying "Z does not look like X at all". They are so different, in my mind that applying delta X is like saying "imagine that instead of leaking documents and fleeing the country, he had not leaked documents, but instead sat at a segregated lunch counter, and instead of fleeing the country, he calmly complied with the police and spent the night in jail".
I agree with all of your points about Civil Disobedience itself; and you beat me to quoting King's Birmingham Jail letter by the barest of fractions of hairs. If you choose to, say, not pay taxes, and when the government gets wise, you skip town to avoid paying, this is not civil disobedience; even if you chose to not pay taxes to specifically protest the tax itself. But this does not even barely resemble what Snowden has done, so I do not concede that Y is necessary or even relevant to the justification.