system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is "whistleblowing" such a heavily punishable offense?

For example, why does Edward Snowden have hide in another country to avoid being charged for exposing human rights violations?
gpt
Whistleblowing is not a punishable offence in and of itself, but the desemination of classified information is, especially if you agreed in your employment not to do so. Someone reporting the find, like Wikileaks, has done nothing wrong. But snowden violated a number of conditions in his contract that are designed to prevent him from leaking classified information since he was a member of an intelligence gathering agency. Right or wrong he committed a crime, the crime was not the whistleblowing itself however.