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The "lump it" method doesn't work, it's top news for a day then everyone gets back to what they were doing.

Dripping it out better highlights the incompetence of those who were tasked to keep it all in check (including journalism as a whole) and the extravagance of what has been going on by matching the scale of the surveilance to the scale of reporting.

It also highlights hypocrisy, such as the initial Merkel reaction "how dare they! Oh, well carry on" with the reaction after the revelations that Merkel was spied on "How dare they! We can't let this go on".

Not acting because "unsavoury elements will benefit" would just lead to a paralysis, unsavoury elements always find a way to benefit, it's part of what makes them so unsavoury.