[Jahava]

At some point I have to draw a line between the information that he leaked regarding questionable (and, ultimately, illegal) domestic US spying programs and the sizable remainder of the corpus detailing US tools, techniques, and strategy employed against foreign nations. The former is undoubtedly potentially patriotic, while the latter is a legitimate and legal function of the NSA and likely damaged its intelligence mission on a number of fronts (and is, ultimately, treasonous).

I have to ask myself: could he have leaked the former without the latter? In all available information, I have not seen a compelling reason to think that the two bodies of data were inseparable. A heroic Snowden with the best of intentions absolutely needed to invest the time and care into either not collecting the body of non-US data in the first place or, failing that, purging it from the body that he released to the world.

For me, his failure to do either inexorably poisons any heroic fallout with the treasonous side effects. One step further: why did he neglect to do something as simple and important? I find the heroic Snowden to be a hard sell, since it seems like he was at best grossly irresponsible and, more likely, motivated by something other than patriotism.

[KingMob]

You're missing a key point in how the spying was actually done: because the Five Eyes nations have tighter controls on domestic spying, they relied on each other to spy on each other's citizens and share the data through reciprocity. Plus, the NSA used the excuse of a single foreign party on a conversation to hoover up all communications just in case. This severely blurs the lines between domestic and foreign spying, and it would be difficult to reveal the details of domestic spying without also revealing how the GCHQ spies on Americans and the NSA spies on the British.

Also consider that Snowden did British citizens a favor by revealing how the GCHQ was ultimately spying on them, too.

[dsp1234]

could he have leaked the former without the latter?

Seems like a logical, though not desirable, no. He didn't, and I would argue couldn't, have had the time. From the time he fled until his passport was revoked, was a pretty short amount of time. Additionally, had he been caught before releasing the data we would never know the name Snowden, or the abuses that occurred.

I would say that the time spent sifting through journalists to find someone who was trust worthy was better spent. That person would then have a shield around them which would protect them, even if Snowden was captured.

So basically, if had stopped to do that before releasing, then the likelihood that we would have ever seen any evidence, let alone the correct set of evidence, is very small.

[harryh]

Undoubtedly and potentially are two adverbs you rarely see next to each other.

[justinpombrio]

> and the sizable remainder of the corpus detailing US tools, techniques, and strategy employed against foreign nations.

Could you provide a reference to these? I've heard this referred to before, but still don't know what he did that could have done actual harm.

EDIT: Unless that harm is simply other nations thinking that the US isn't spying on them, and then learning that they really, really are?

[dTal]

I think it's government propaganda. The only foreign espionage stuff I remember hearing about was this[1], which turned out to be a false flag leak[2] (!!!).

[1]http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-uk-s...

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-gov...

[dTal]

Downvote away, but this has come up repeatedly and no one has managed to provide a source. Meanwhile the fake incident I just linked is strong evidence that the government is willing to go to lengths to construct that narrative. It's been repeated so often that even Snowden supporters are starting to leave it unchallenged, but I think we're witnessing revisionism right here. In fact, as far as I can tell Greenwald et al have exercised considerable restraint in only publishing activities with bearing on domestic surveillance.