Wait ... is the traitor Edward Snowden a HERO now?

Edward Snowden is a criminal, that seems pretty obvious. But is he a hero?

On Thursday a federal appeals court said that the government's bulk collection telephone records of millions of Americans, which began after the 9/11 attacks, is illegal..

The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

But that case was filed after National Security Agency contractor Snowden leaked documents to journalists revealing that agency collected phone records and digital communications of millions of citizens who were not suspected of any crimes.

Strangely (at least to me) the appeals court hasn't blocked the program. It wants Congress to decide how the NSA program should continue. It's exactly the kind of thing Congress should have been talking about, should have defined, before the NSA started collecting data.

Does this make Snowden the whistle-blower he claims to be or a common traitor.

The New Yorker magazine's Jeffrey Toobin says criminal.

He has pointed out that a government employee or contractor who discloses classified information without authorization is committing a crime.

.He calls Snowden "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison."

Toobin's colleague, John Cassidy, believes just the opposite. He says of Snowden, "He is a hero. In revealing the colossal scale of the U.S. government's eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, he has performed a great public service that more than outweighs any breach of trust he may have committed."

In an interview with "The Guardian" a while back Snowden said, "The NSA

has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

The federal government has instituted some reforms since some of Snowden's information has gone public. Would that have happened if the information had not been leaked?

And now a federal appeals court has ruled that the NSA behavior that bothered Snowden so much is illegal.

In it's opinion the court said, "The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here." Adding, "In light of the asserted national security interests at stake, we deem it prudent to pause to allow an opportunity for debate in Congress that may (or may not) profoundly alter the legal landscape."

So, is Snowden a criminal or a hero?

This is the whistleblower's dilemma.

Sometimes, he can be both.