Manning and Snowden help and hurt the U.S.
A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonesty or illegal activity occurring in an organization. Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are men in their late 20's.
Bradley Manning is a former United States army soldier born on December 17,1987 and is currently on trial, allegedly having passed classified material on to the website WikiLeaks. Manning says he leaked the material to expose the wrong-doing by the military and U.S. military dimplomats. He intended to disclose more classified information to WikiLeaks that damaged U.S. foreign relations. If convicted, he faces life in prison in military custody with no chance of parole. The U.S. thinks Manning knew that he was aiding Al-Qaeda when he released 700,000 documents to an anit-secrecy website.
Edward Snowden is a former C.I.A and NSA computer technician born on June 21,1983 and is trapped in an airport. Edward snowden went public as the source behind the daily drumbeat of disclosures about the Nation's surveillance programs. Snowden's reasoning behind he did what he did was that "the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong."
In my opinion, these cases are very similar and are interesting. I think that these two men both helped and hurt the United States. Snowden and Manning hurt the U.S. because some of the information that they leaked can cause bad foreign relations and communication and can help/aid the enemy, therefore hurting the U.S. Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning helped the United States because some of the information they leaked are pieces of information the American people need to see or should be aware of. Either way you look at it, everyone has an opinion: some think it was a good thing, some think it was bad, and others think both we can never really tell what it is. The final opinion depends on the person.