[mpyne]

> My understanding is that he has actually been quite a bit more judicious than Manning about what he has released, putting out stuff that clearly shows what the NSA is doing wrong.

That was his claim, yes, but it's quite incorrect.

Various journalists have the data now and are piecing through it, not Snowden, but things like details of Chinese hacking or tapping into Merkel or Medvedev's phone calls are not violations of U.S. civil liberties and can hardly be said to have been judicious disclosures.

In that regard Manning actually ends up with a better case IMHO; Snowden claimed to have specifically looked at and identified every piece of data he took as requiring disclosure (although taking 58,000-1,000,000+ pieces in a year with a full-time job to do would tend to argue against being 'selective'), so any areas where Snowden leaked something that was only vital to national security happened after he specifically cleared it.

Manning, on the other hand, specifically released a few things but other than that let loose a bunch of data she never quite scanned through. This was definitely negligent, but doesn't seem to have been malicious.