[slg]

1. They don't need plausible deniability because they wouldn't deny they are spying on foreign nationals. Every world power spies on foreign nationals. The controversy that Snowden revealed is that they are spying on their own citizens, spying on foreign citizens is already known and accepted as a reality of modern politics.

2. No one was really questioning the plausibility or legitimacy of the documents Snowden released (there was some challenges on the interpretation of those documents) and revealing unconfirmed and unrelated intelligence operations does nothing to confirm the information about the domestic operations that he released.

[reallydude]

SMH

Your assurances that you know what the NSA (or proxy) would reason is laughable, for example. You have a view that he's a bad actor and it doesn't matter to me, other than it's a trivial thought experiment to justify his actions. GL