It is not a "dagger to the heart", it is something they have to take into account. What makes things harder for them makes it harder for the enemy, and vice-ve

It is not a "dagger to the heart", it is something they have to take into account. What makes things harder for them makes it harder for the enemy, and vice-versa. If anything, maybe it will help intelligence services realize that gathering intelligence is only half of the job, keeping secrets is the other half. Well, maybe they already realized it and we are not aware of that (it means it worked). But at the time of Snowden's leaks they failed big time. While most people focused on the content of the leaks and arguing about whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor, what I mostly saw is a guy who managed to break the security of the NSA. If a single guy can do that, what about trained spies backed by world power gouvernements? I guess countries like Russia and China already knew everything there was to know about the NSA. I could go for some "master plan" conspiracy theory, but my guess is just that the NSA is incompetent, or at least it was at the time of Snowden. Maybe that "dagger to the heart" is more like a wake up call, I hope for them.