EDWARD SNOWDEN HAS plenty of fans. A film about him by Oliver Stone describes how, as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, Mr Snowden turned against the system and smuggled out files about its spying activities. To coincide with the release of the film in September, the fans have launched a campaign for his pardon. No one else has sparked such an intense debate on public policy, they say. He won a change in the law and shifted global attitudes to privacy.

Having fled to Hong Kong, Mr Snowden later took refuge in Moscow, where he now lives under the protection of the Russian government. If he returned to face trial in America he would not be able to mount a full defence. The Espionage act, under which he would be tried, does not allow him to appeal to the public interest. Yet even if he could, he would probably be convicted. And rightly so.

America’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recently published its own verdict on Mr Snowden, calling the leak “the largest and most damaging public release of classified information in US intelligence history”. It endangered troops and agents overseas and undermined defences against terrorism. The vast majority of the documents Mr Snowden stole did not touch on the privacy of American citizens. Instead, they revealed details of how the NSA spies on non-Americans, including foreign leaders, who do not enjoy constitutional protection. The committee says that America may have to spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to mitigate the damage.

Others point out the indirect costs. Private companies were embarrassed by being shown to co-operate with the American authorities. The very fact that the leak took place may lead people and companies to conclude that to work with America is not safe. That feeling will have been reinforced by the arrest last month of a second contractor, Hal Martin, on suspicion of having stolen classified material, though as yet there is no evidence that he passed it on.

Mr Snowden’s supporters claim that he is a whistleblower. But the committee found that he made little or no attempt to raise his concerns with his superiors. If they had proved unsympathetic, he could have gone to the NSA’s inspector-general, or to the committee itself.

Mr Snowden’s boss at the NSA in Hawaii, Steven Bay, also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton. He lost his job over the leak. Speaking in September to Cipher Brief, a newsletter, he attested to Mr Snowden’s intelligence and ability but questioned his qualifications for speaking out. “He never actually had access to any of that data,” Mr Bay said. “All of the ‘domestic-collection stuff’ that he revealed, he never had access to that. So he didn’t understand the oversight and compliance, he didn’t understand the rules for handling it, and he didn’t understand the processing of it…In my mind Ed’s not a hero.”