Should Edward Snowden receive clemency?

What is clemency?  Its the power of a president (protected by the Article 2 of the Constitution) to pardon an individual and either forgive the act altogether, or reduce the sentence.  The most famous pardon was when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.  The presidential decision cannot be questioned or overturned.

Last Sunday, the New York Times wrote an editorial that Edward Snowden should be pardoned for leaking NSA secrets.

According to an article in The Guardian, Edward Snowden said he didn't trust the internal system developed to report complaints about the NSA.

One of the main criticisms levelled at Snowden by the Obama administration has been that he should have taken up an official complaint within the NSA, rather than travelling to Hong Kong to share his concerns about the agency’s data dragnet with the Guardian and other news organisations. But in an interview with the New York Times, Snowden has dismissed that option as implausible.
“The system does not work,” he said, pointing to the paradox that “you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.” If he had tried to sound the alarm internally, he would have “been discredited and ruined” and the substance of his warnings “would have been buried forever”.

On one side, I want people to use the prescribed processes for whistleblowing.  But, by requiring that, are the rules being given more prominence than the truth?
On the other side, if we do grant clemency, does that set a precedent that could easily get out of control?

In both cases, the bottom line is that we can't trust that every person will do the right thing.
If there's a valid complaint to be made, we can't trust that every person in power will take the appropriate action.
And if one person is granted clemency, we can't trust that every person who claims this benefit would have the best interests of the nation in mind.

I don't think I'd have the courage to be a whistleblower.  It's huge.  It changes your world in a way you won't be able to take back.  But, if you're going to do it, you have to take the consequences.  That's the power of civil disobedience.  That's why Ghandi and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were a force for change - they accepted the consequences of standing up against wrongdoing.

Staying silent has consequences, and courageous acts have consequences as well.

I don't know the right answer, but my gut instinct is that Edward Snowden should come back to the United States.  I think he should serve some time.  Unless we hear more about how these leaks have caused the death of other Americans, I don't think he should serve more than 5 - 10 years in a minimum security prison.

What do I know?  I don't feel right making any kind of judgement because I purposefully make sure I'm not in a position where I'd have to make this kind of decision.  I'd probably pick silence and I'm ashamed that I would.