Greenwald Lashes Back At Critics Who Call Snowden A Russian Propagandist

[joshcryer]

99. I think he did manage privilege escalation.

But other than that I doubt he did anything special but look around the CIA/NSA/GHCQ's internal wiki, which, btw, entities like freaking Stratfor have access to. That's why nothing ground breaking has been released. A huge chunk of the stuff was known about before, only in obscure articles, no one really "cared about." Most of the data he stole likely legitimized the NSA's existence in one way or another (and not necessarily against terrorists).

The only big deal is that the NSA admitted to spying on the entire world, keeping every plaintext communication it has access to and that Tor is safe (if proper procedures are used). That's about it.

I think it's very possible that Snowden was communicating to outside groups before he left Booz because it's way too coincidental that he fled literally a couple of days after getting the FISA report. I think the theory that he was sitting around waiting for a FISA report to be published is sound. Just search "FISA" on the wiki, skim the reports, when one comes out that's suspect, grab it, and as much else as you can, and bail.