Edward Snowden makes a good first impression. In his interview on YouTube, he comes across as a thoughtful boy-next-door type.
Unlike Julian Assange, the twitchy narcissist behind WikiLeaks, Mr Snowden looks like somebody you would be quite happy to see date your daughter.
First impressions matter because – unless you are a hardline libertarian or a cold-blooded securocrat – Mr Snowden’s exposure of the cyber snooping of the US government will leave you feeling ambivalent. Nobody likes the idea of their emails and internet activity sitting on some giant supercomputer in Maryland or Cheltenham. On the other hand, most people accept that there are legitimate security reasons for governments to monitor what is going on in cyber space.