Edward Snowden Has Been Formally Charged With Espionage By The U.S. Government... ARE THEY KIDDING?

This face has become a hero's face for American's rights of privacy

Edward Snowden, former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency, has been charged with espionage, by the U.S. Government.  

So...  ...they are charging him with doing his job well?  

After all, he worked as an intelligence analyst for the world's biggest spying agency that is spying on not only everyone in the USA, but inadvertently the whole world.

espionage
es·pi·o·nage [es-pee-uh-nahzh] noun
...the act or practice of spying.

Example sentences: 
1. Cobb runs a dream team of mindbending espionage agents, true inside operators.
2. It is difficult to provide evidence of espionage, given its secretive manner.
3. The disclosure comes amid heightened fears of state-sponsored espionage.

Origin:
late 18th century: from French espionnage, from espionner 'to spy', from espion 'a spy'

Espionage, or in layman's terms: spying was his job!

An N.S.A. spokesperson astonished his audience when announcing the espionage (spying) charges against Snowden; completely unaware of the absurdity of the charge, and he announced the charge holding a perfectly straight face.

Photo rights: Fawlty Towers

He said, “These charges send a clear message [that] in the United States, you can’t spy on people.”

He went on to speak of the other charge of theft of Government Documents, saying, “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”

“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy…”

 
WHAT???

Photo rights: Fawlty Towers

Was this sarcasm, or a complete mockery of the Government he works for?  

Seriously, couldn't they have cooked up something better to charge him with?  Maybe Treason?  Oh... Wait!  That would be what our government is committing on us... when they break our Constitutional laws, by using the N.S.A.'s espionage intelligence analysts in their spying of every move, email, text, phone call, and literally everything that we do in privacy.