A poll of Americans and people living in nine other Western countries has found exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden is far more popular abroad than he is at home.

Snowden, a contractor who worked with the National Security Agency, ignited an intense, ongoing global policy debate about mass surveillance in June 2013 by exposing the collection of vast amounts of phone and Internet records and communications by the NSA and allied intelligence agencies.

For his efforts, about 64 percent of Americans familiar with Snowden hold a negative opinion of him, according to KRC Research poll results shared with U.S. News. Thirty-six percent hold a positive opinion, with just 8 percent holding a very positive opinion.

The survey was commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union, which provides legal representation to Snowden, who received asylum in Russia after the U.S. canceled his passport.

The new poll results show that about two-thirds of American adults have heard, read or seen at least a small amount of information about Snowden. Awareness was much higher - at 95 percent - in Germany, whose chancellor’s phone was famously tapped by the NSA.

Familiarity with Snowden is close to U.S. levels in the U.K., Canada and New Zealand. In Australia, however, only 43 percent said they were familiar with him. The four English-speaking countries work closely with the U.S. as members of the “five eyes” surveillance alliance.

Though apparently unpopular at home, Snowden has high favorability ratings elsewhere.

In Germany and Italy, 84 percent of adults familiar with Snowden view him positively. The figure is about 80 percent in France, the Netherlands and Spain.

Australians aware of Snowden give him a 64 percent favorability rating. A 58 percent majority of Canadians, a 54 percent majority of Britons and a 51 percent majority of New Zealand residents familiar with Snowden view him favorably.

Through his attorneys Snowden has expressed a willingness to return to the U.S. in exchange for a jail-free deal, but he's also expressed interest in relocating to other foreign countries, so his apparent popularity abroad may be seen as good news, especially as the embarrassed U.S. government has thus far been ungenerous in negotiations.

In another silver lining for Snowden, the poll finds that young Americans - who are most likely to use technology and least likely to remember Cold War-era foreign relations with Russia - do approve of his work.

Fifty-six percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive opinion of Snowden. The relatively warm feelings of so-called “Millennials” for Snowden was highlighted in publicly released results from the ACLU and contrasts sharply with older age cohorts.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, suggested in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that support among young Americans may foreshadow a switch over by the general population, pointing to historical polling trends on same-sex marriage.

“The broad support for Edward Snowden among Millennials around the world should be a message to democratic countries that change is coming,” Romero said in a statement. “They are a generation of digital natives who don’t want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls.”

Support for Snowden drops dramatically with the age of the respondents. Just 34 percent of Americans aged 35-44 have positive feelings about him, and a mere 28 percent of those 45-54 do. Twenty-six percent of Americans older than 55 view him favorably.

Americans overall say by plurality that Snowden has done “more to hurt” U.S. national security (43 percent) than help it (20 percent). A similar breakdown was seen with views on whether he helped or hurt efforts to combat terrorism, though the numbers flip on whether his actions will lead to greater privacy protections.

The ACLU-commissioned poll surveyed 1,000 or more people in each of the 10 countries between Feb. 17 and 19.

Few polls ask directly about Snowden. The policy principles and reforms he touts generally have greater support.

The U.S. results paint a less rosy picture than surveys conducted shortly after Snowden's initial disclosures. Two polls conducted by Quinnipiac University in June and July 2013, for example, found 55 percent viewed Snowden as a “whistleblower” while just 34 percent viewed him as “a traitor.”

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