[maxerickson]

There's a stage of disclosure prior to publication, where Snowden gave the documents to journalists. So it isn't necessarily possible to evaluate what he leaked by looking at what has been published.

It's a problem that the internal whistleblowing mechanism isn't working, but contractors shouldn't be picking reporters that then filter national secrets.

[nitrogen]

Why not? You use the word "should" without a good counterargument to the parent's point, that there was no other way to blow the whistle.

[maxerickson]

I don't see where they made that point.

Anyway, Snowden could have made sure to personally review everything he turned over. It's certainly an open question if such a leak could have been as effective, but it would obviously be an improvement in some ways.

[AnthonyMouse]

And how is it that Snowden is more qualified than reporters to do that? The implication behind your argument is that giving the information to the likes of Glen Greenwald was dangerous. Are you asserting that it was plausible Greenwald would have sold it to Al Qaeda?

[maxerickson]

It's plausible Greenwald could have lost control of the documents (read http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno...). Snowden is hopefully more qualified along those lines.

And yes, I do think that the person with security clearance minimizing their leak is a better than a reporter doing it.

[AnthonyMouse]

> And yes, I do think that the person with security clearance minimizing their leak is a better than a reporter doing it.

Isn't that what happened? Snowden didn't give Greenwald access to the NSA network. He chose a subset of the information. Even that subset was more than would be prudent to make public, but filtering it further is a labor intensive process beyond the capacity of one individual, so he chose people he reasoned could be trusted.

It's not like the government would have provided a team of researchers with security clearances to help him sort it out.

[MaysonL]

Do you really think that Snowden could have kept unencrypted documents secret while still avoiding arrest? Would he have been able to keep them away from the Russians, and been able to transmit them to trustworthy reporters?

[nickpsecurity]

He did long enough to read and organize all them per interviews. All tgat's needed to filter it down to only illegal stuff withoug blowing ops.

Further, argument falls apart when he hands it over to journalists clearly unable to stop nation-state opponents per the very leaks. Of course someone hacked into them or bribed/coerced a copy. It should be assumed even without evidence given what we know.

[maxerickson]

Was he on a tight clock prior to the press exposure of the documents? I don't actually know. If not, he could have reviewed them at his leisure, no need to tell the US Gov he was going to release the documents while he was engaged in the process of paring them down.