The spy and the patriot, Tom Engelhardt

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-080813.html

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Only one tiny subset of Americans might still be able to cite Hale's words and have them mean anything. Even when Army Private First Class Bradley Manning wrote to the former hacker who would turn him in about the possibility that he might find himself in jail for life or be executed, he didn't use those words. But if he had, they would have been appropriate. Former Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden didn't use them in Hong Kong when he discussed the harsh treatment he assumed he would get from his government for revealing the secrets of the National Security Agency, but had he, those words wouldn't have sounded out of whack.

The recent conviction of Manning on six charges under the Espionage Act for releasing secret military and government documents should be a reminder that we Americans are in a rapidly transforming world. It is, however, a world that's increasingly hard to capture accurately because the changes are outpacing the language we have to describe them and so our ability to grasp what is happening.

Take the words "spying" and "espionage". At a national level, you were once a spy who engaged in espionage when, by whatever subterfuge, you gathered the secrets of an enemy, ordinarily an enemy state, for the use of your own country.

In recent years, however, those being charged under the Espionage Act by the George W Bush and Obama administrations have not in any traditional sense been spies. None were hired or trained by another power or entity to mine secrets. All had, in fact, been trained either by the US government or an allied corporate entity. All, in their urge to reveal, were freelancers (aka whistleblowers) who might, in the American past, have gone under the label of "patriots".
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An interesting study on the limits of language in this technologically revolutionary age.
Like all Tom Engelhardt's articles, worth reading

[Recursion]

1. Very interesting point

In recent years, however, those being charged under the Espionage Act by the George W Bush and Obama administrations have not in any traditional sense been spies. None were hired or trained by another power or entity to mine secrets.

Not 100% true (I can think of two legit foreign spies), but very interesting point.