Within reason, yes. If they were leaking things indiscriminately, then they shouldn't be considered a whistleblower, even if some of their leaked information was about something that the public had a legitimate interest in knowing.

These aren't black and white issues, so think more in terms of what a "reasonable" person would consider. If your goal is to expose a particular program - then you should be leaking only things relevant to that program. Throwing in diplomatic cables between embassies because you can just isn't relevant. And it weakens your argument for whistleblower protection.

How fortunate that those allowing the crimes can set up the rules for how they can be judged.

So what you are saying is "how unfortunate that the 'reasonable person' clause is used in law"?

You know. I think it fairly hard to imagine how reasonable you can be when you had access to some of that content he had.

Reasonable makes no sense in this discussion.

What manning did was use a Punt Gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun) to kill a fly.

If you consider the systemic problems in the US military industrial complex to be a "fly", including the cover up of mass murder of civilians, I'd hate to see what you consider a big problem.

I was speaking purely in relative terms. Compare the actions of Manning and Snowden.

Fair enough, but the state is pursuing Snowden with similar fervor. Do you believe he will be afforded reasonable whistleblower protections for being more judicious in his revelations? I suspect the state will demonize him in the same way, and seek to send another message to whistleblowers that revealing state crimes will cost you your life.

I think he has a reasonable shot at it. Notice how many high-ranking pols have publically spoken up in support of Snowden...something that never happened with Manning.

What about 699,000 documents "more than the main part"?

What about it? Apparently not enough documents to aiding the enemy which to me is the good news.

Well, had the judge not imposed the extra element on the base version of the UCMJ "aiding the enemy" charge he very well could have been convicted of that too. The UCMJ is sometimes incredibly broad, and that's no less the case here. Certainly there is no minimum document count needed to be convicted. A single document would suffice, in fact.

So basically "collateral damage" should only be illegal when we are talking about whistleblowers.

Why didn't he blow the whistle in the ear of a sympathetic Congressman or even a US journalist? What peculiar logic.