Oliver Stone’s “Snowden,” a film that is restrained yet ultimately evident in the sympathetic light it casts on the renowned whistleblower, has brought with its release a renewed Pardon Snowden campaign. Indeed, efforts to urge President Obama to federally pardon Edward J. Snowden have only been invigorated by the newly released film, as well as the approaching presidential election.

Ultimately, Snowden’s service to the American people more than compensates for the laws he broke in the process.

Once a National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, in 2013, uncovered and then leaked 1.5 million classified documents from the NSA, disclosing to journalists — and eventually, the dismayed public — the United States’ mass electronic surveillance programs.

And in doing so, he sacrificed not only his occupation, but his freedom as well. Today, he lives as an outlaw in Moscow, Russia. He has been there for three years, and continues to await pardon from the president.

What the public has gleamed from Snowden’s efforts is this: the NSA spied on the digital lives of hundreds of millions of people. The agency collected domestic telephone “metadata” as calls were recorded without consent. These secret programs were funded on the tax dollars of unaware citizens.

Snowden’s discoveries have allowed us a heightened vigilance toward the government and its actions. And with this, a single question inevitably arises: What sacrifice of privacy is necessary for an increase in public safety?

Congress responded to these revelations with corrective legislation, reforms that rival what followed the Watergate scandal. But for all his work, Snowden now faces espionage charges that will guarantee him at least 30 years in jail.

So as the presidential election gets closer and closer, the demands for a pardon have only become more frequent, more difficult to ignore. After both presidential candidates have declared themselves opposed to pardoning Snowden — with Democrat Hillary Clinton calling for his trial in the U.S., to Republican Donald Trump outright suggesting he be executed — Snowden’s best bet lies with Obama, who will leave office come January. But on the other side of this zealous cry to deliver Snowden from the clutches of will-he-or-won’t-he presidential pardon limbo are many who see the man not as a patriot, but as a dissident, a pilferer, a traitor.

“Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it,” Lisa Monaca, President Obama’s adviser on terrorism and homeland security, said in response to the White House petition to pardon Snowden on the White House’s website. The petition overall received 167,955 votes from the public. “He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers … Right now, he’s running away from the consequences of his actions.”

And, of course, these people do have their reasons to deny Snowden his pardon. When he began his work as a contractor for the NSA, he took an oath to secrecy. And by violating this contractual obligation, he disrupted intelligence-gathering that would perhaps help the government keep tabs on terrorist activity.

Most prominent amongst these objections is that the NSA’s telephone metadata program had not, had never, harmed a single soul. What reason was there, then, for exposing an innocuous and potentially beneficial program to not only the masses of Americans that raised outcry, but to foreign countries as well?

These are valid arguments, yes. They are founded upon truth. But consider this: Even though the NSA hadn’t hurt anyone at the time, there is no evidence that it would have remained infallible in the future, as it continued to spy on millions of innocents and violate their privacy with no probable cause.

And let’s talk about our Constitution. We fought for the Fourth Amendment, which guaranteed us our right to be secure in our homes, against unlawful, unreasonable searches and seizures. Exceptions to this amendment don’t extend to anything or anyone, not even the surveillance state.

Opponents to Snowden’s pardon argue that he violated his oath and broke the law. But what they fail to acknowledge is that the NSA did the same.

By violating the Constitution of the United States for nothing better than unfounded suspicion, the NSA created a desperate situation in which the only way to crack down on such unlawful behavior was through more unlawful behavior.

Edward Snowden certainly broke the law — that much is undeniably, unrelentingly evident. But in times of government overreach, how much of the law are we willing to tolerate?