I don't get why people are happy? He took images of a classified area and tried to destroy all evidence of it.
Ofcourse it was probably an innocent objective from him, but law is law and at the end of the day those laws are in place to stop spies etc which he could well have been.
That said, he made his mistake and paid for his crimes, so hopefully he moves on with his life and things work out for him.
But he HAD to pay for his crimes, otherwise if he didn't every tom, dick and harry would start to take pictures of classified material/weapons etc and have a precedent of getting away with it.
Mostly, it has to do with a comparison and contrast around the circumstances of Hillary's situation. Yes, what he did was wrong and he compounded it with the destruction of the devices. Howerver, the actions of Mrs. Clinton were deemed to have not been done with intent. That's absurd, given what we know about her private server and the handling of it.
People are generally tired of seeing the Clintons and people around them skate on blatant violations of national security, while others are punished for lesser offenses. This young man served jail time, while Sandy Berger only had his clearance revoked and called 'sloppy.' The man was caught red handed stealing documents from the National Archive and attempting to destroy them, for crying out loud - and nothing.
As far as I'm concerned, Jeffrey Sterling should be pardoned, as well. If ever someone deserved whistleblower protection for releasing information, it's him.