Again, South Africa didn't make up laws just for Nelson Mandela. He certainly ran afoul of laws passed "long before this Mandela ordeal."
The relevant test is not simply "was there a law on the books that the US would like to connect to this incident" (there will always be some law that a creative prosecutor can adapt) but what was the political value of his act?
His motivation was articulated as the political necessity to raise debate about the implications of a government agency spying on foreigners (which you initially denied and then conceded later on), spying on americans in otherwise lawful private correspondence with foreigners, doing so without democratic supervision (unless lying to congressional committees and getting the approval of a secret parallel court system counts as "supervision" in not just your world but the real world), and doing so without public knowledge or assent.
He's made enough of a case that it deserves a full airing in any country interested to hear it before he is spirited away into the American Gulag. It may well be that he can make his case.
You keep bringing up Mandela, but he in fact admittedly broke laws for his part in several bombings. He pleaded guilty to sabotage. These were illegal acts. Whether he was doing them in the name of politics is not a shield to prosecution from the law. It would seem by your logic, if a Democrat went around killing Republicans, that's fine as long as they were doing it out of political motivations, because prosecuting that person would be considered political persecution.
Breaking the law is breaking the law. Motivations aren't relevant. Everyone has some justification for doing what they did. Snowden had many legal avenues to air his grievances and concerns. He wasn't being repressed politically. He was able to vote for his third party candidate as he specifically admitted. You can't decide that you don't think you'll get your way if you follow the law, so you're going to break it because it provides you the most desirable outcome. He could have accomplished his goals through legal means and chose not to do it. He is not being persecuted, he is being prosecuted.
And I would like you to show me where I ever said the NSA doesn't spy on foreigners. And the NSA does NOT spy on Americans in correspondences with foreigners, which is why minimization procedures exist for communications involving citizens, except in certain circumstances stated in law that allows the communications to be kept. You can attach whatever adjectives you want to the FISC, but the point remains that the court was Constitutionally setup by Congress and Constitutionally executes its duty. Again, just because you don't like its decisions doesn't mean the court is any less valid.
Also, extradition treaties don't allow for the full trial of a person in another country before extradition occurs. They only have to show the burden of proof is met to bring a person to trial in the country they are found in. A taped confession is more than enough in any country to bring someone to trial for a crime. He's not going to get a full airing at all. He will appeal, they will look at the evidence the US has provided, see if it meets the terms of the extradition treaty, and move on.
Others speaking against Snowden have bragged about the ability of the US to persuade airspace to be closed lest Snowden reach a country that will grant asylum. Those countries were allies. And in your own point you concede the value and necessity of securing support from other countries, allied or not I suppose, even if you do feel that economic threats are the proper way to promote that cooperation.
None of that cooperation is made remotely more likely by blithely asserting that the US has a right to spy on the rest of us in our private lawful communications.
You keep taking great pains to say that the US doesn't spy on its own citizens (ignoring that it does do so when a US citizen engages with a foreigner). But presumably that means you don't want your government spying on you, and you agree that it would be wrong. What I've really wanted to get around to is why you think it is okay for the British government to spy on you, an American in your own country, which, according to the same Guardian links posted earlier, they do with even greater intrusiveness than the American government.
Why should it be any of David Cameron's business which of your neighbours are called from your house, or what web sites are visited from the IP address you pay for? Why the fuck would you be okay with that, and why would you expect the rest of us to feel any differently when the shoe is on the other foot?
It has never been shown that airspace was closed on request by the US. And isn't that counter to you idea that everyone is so mad at the US that they're not going to help? Last time I checked, not one EU country accepted Snowden's asylum request. If we take what you assume to be true, apparently a number of EU nations will deny a head of state air space rights in their countries as soon as the US demands it. What makes you think then that these countries are all of a sudden going to say "hey, we're not doing anything"? And do you know why other countries are having this timid, fake outraged response? Because they spy on everyone else as well. No one wants to stick their neck out and complain too loudly because that would make them look bad when their intelligence activities are release to the press. And my post never conceded any points about requiring support from other countries.
And I do take great pains to make the claim the US doesn't spy on its citizens, even when communicating with a foreigner. First off, spying necessarily requires targeting. If the claims were true that the government somehow stored all communications, then it still wouldn't be spying unless those communications were monitored/listened to. Of course, I still maintain they don't store all of that. Secondly, we've seen in the documents released that unless a very specific set of legal requirements are met, then the NSA cannot keep any collection that involves an American citizen or anyone in the United States. I will continue to maintain that until you show me some proof the US is spying on American citizens.
And I'm not naive enough to think other countries don't spy on me. What gets me through the day is knowing that David Cameron doesn't give a shit about what I do because I'm doing nothing wrong. I know that any number of countries may keep tabs on me whether I like it or not, so I just conduct myself as if EVERYONE is keeping tabs on me. I'm OK with that because I know there is no changing it. People have been spied on by other countries for centuries. You can revolt if you want, but any new government is going to do the same thing. What I'm not going to do is rail against the government that has the best chance of finding out about it and protecting me to the extent possible just because I have some personal political disposition against said government. I don't trust you or Kulindhar or kallipolis to do anything to be able to combat these foreign powers, so I'm going to rely on the government to do so. Until such time as you can prove that the government is violating my rights or that I've suffered some harm from a government action, I'm going to go with the more believable idea that the government is serving its purpose of trying to protect its citizens instead of the more paranoid idea that the government is out to get everyone.
