Journalists with a publicly verifiable track record who had a history of adversarial journalism. He chose them for their principles, not their charisma. It seem

Journalists with a publicly verifiable track record who had a history of adversarial journalism. He chose them for their principles, not their charisma. It seems like you're grasping at straws here. How is an embedded contractor with high level security clearances supposed to get cozy with journalists? It's ludicrous. Snowden watched what happened to Bill Binney and Thomas Drake and knew that the suggested whistleblowing path was a trap. Journalists were the second to last resort (the last being the wikileaks approach). The outcomes are evident. He was right. There is/was a problem and courts and commentators worldwide acknowledge that. Hell, even Obama acknowledged there were problems. And on your last point: it turns out non-Americans have human rights too, something that Snowden would have no-doubt recognized after living in Switzerland. American exceptionalism bullshit is no excuse for crimes against humanity (i.e. mass surveillance). These are uncharacteristically dumb comments from you.