To me, an important aspect of Snowden's revelations was to confirm that many "conspiracy theories" were actually fact. To understand events, I like to examine

To me, an important aspect of Snowden's revelations was to confirm that many "conspiracy theories" were actually fact. To understand events, I like to examine different groups' motivations. What would be in their interest? For government, wanting to maintain control and power over its citizens, especially citizens with power, money, and influence, monitoring all conversations is obviously in their interest. Hiding this monitoring is also in their interest. So of course, they do both. It seems very obvious, but without Snowden's evidence, it's very easy to label this as "tin foil hat" conspiracy theory: "Of course the government is not monitoring everyone's phone calls. They could never keep that a secret for so long!" But as we have found out via Snowden, they actually can keep secrets for a very long time. So an important aspect of his disclosure to me is to make it less easy to label something as conspiracy theory or being a paranoid nut job, just because there is no evidence to support a "wild" claim - yet.