[commentereleven]

Snowden was low-level, but he was basically an admin doing migration to a new system. His job description required the access he was given.

Additionally, one of the lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks was that keeping data too "Need to Know" might prevent people who actually need to know information from knowing about it.

[ultramancool]

I'd recommend you read Greenwald's book, "No Place to Hide". Snowden was not exactly "low-level", he was in training for operations. He backed down to a low-level position by choice when he wanted greater access to documents. He even took a pay cut to do so.