In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama called upon “We, the People” to preserve America’s ideals of individual freedom and equality. When Edward Snowden disclosed the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes, he was rising to this challenge. Like the nation’s “founding fathers”, he was also defying the usurpations of an increasingly intrusive government. Mr Obama should therefore call off the campaign to apprehend him and offer Mr Snowden a pardon instead.

Mr Snowden stands accused of stealing government property and unauthorised dissemination of classified information. But he did not pass valuable secrets to a foreign government or sell them for personal gain – as convicted spies such as Aldrich Ames or Jonathan Pollard did. On the contrary, he gave up a well-paid job and put his own freedom in jeopardy for a principle.

Mr Snowden’s motives were laudable: he believed fellow citizens should know their government was conducting a secret surveillance programme enormous in scope, poorly supervised and possibly unconstitutional. He was right.