[colordrops]

If he was under duress he probably didn't have time to filter through the documents. Even if he had a bit of time, it's difficult to know what would be relevant as events unfolded after the release.

In any case, it's already been established that he broke the law in order to expose a much greater law breaking, but many if not most people believe it to be OK because we also believe that it was impossible to expose the information in any other way. Considering all the miss-steps most whistleblowers made in their activities, Snowden was remarkably careful and clean. He made some calculations on what he needed to collect to successfully expose the crimes he witnessed, and the accuracy of those calculations is up for debate. I could easily come up with several reasons why he might have thought that he needed all those documents while under duress. For example, there may have been evidence of other crimes, and there would be no way he could sift through the documents while still working. Also, he recognized that he needed to leak slowly in order to keep the story afloat, or else he would get buried under propaganda and forgotten, as has happened to other whistleblowers that released all at once.

[NullCharacter]

> If he was under duress he probably didn't have time to filter through the documents. Even if he had a bit of time, it's difficult to know what would be relevant as events unfolded after the release.

The dude planned this for years, he said it himself. He had plenty of time to simply take evidence of what he was going to blow the whistle on. I don't understand your argument.

> impossible to expose the information in any other way

Except for the many oversight channels that exists which there has yet to be any evidence he used.

> For example, there may have been evidence of other crimes, and there would be no way he could sift through the documents while still working.

If I understand your argument correctly, it's: "it's possible something here is illegal so let's just take all of it." I shouldn't have to explain why that doesn't jive.

> Also, he recognized that he needed to leak slowly in order to keep the story afloat, or else he would get buried under propaganda and forgotten, as has happened to other whistleblowers that released all at once.

None of this addresses the fact that it seems he did a recursive pull of supersecretnsadomain.gov and deuced out to China under the pretenses of whistleblowing.

[colordrops]

> Except for the many oversight channels that exists which there has yet to be any evidence he used.

That is absolutely not true. There is plenty of evidence that he tried to report to several superiors. Read the accounts yourself.

> None of this addresses the fact that it seems he did a recursive pull of supersecretnsadomain.gov and deuced out to China under the pretenses of whistleblowing.

If he was looking to dump documents on china and russia for fun and profit, why exactly would he go through the rigamarole of working with the guardian, making an ethical issue out of it, spending tons of time meeting with various celebrities and dignitaries, doing talks, writing essays, and crafting a remarkably coherent and complex false narrative. That sounds about as far fetched as most things that get labeled conspiracy theories. He'd have to be one serious double agent to pull all that off.