Where he crossed the line was in helping Chelsea Manning to bypass security mechanisms to get access to documents she would not have otherwise had access to. Otherwise, you would have had a situation much like The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers where the US government was constrained by the First Amendment.
Criticize the US all you want, but he didn't get targeted for disagreeing with the state.
He published evidence of US war crimes and is being persecuted for it. How is that not disagreeing with the state?
Where he crossed the line was in helping Chelsea Manning to bypass security mechanisms to get access to documents she would not have otherwise had access to. Otherwise, you would have had a situation much like The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers where the US government was constrained by the First Amendment.