Well, first, they aren't whistle-blowers: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19024443-analysis.. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19024443-an

Well, first, they aren't whistle-blowers: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19024443-analysis.. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/18/19024443-analysis.... That's fairly straightforward and it's getting tiresome hearing the term "whistle-blower", which is intended more for dog-food factory workers reporting the use of rotten horse meat, rather than people releasing gigantic, undifferentiated masses of state secrets. Second, releasing data securely is so trivial that both of these guys must have had a specific reason for not doing so. I mean, a humanitarian impulse would have led them to use the dark net and other channels, but neither of these guys did so. In Manning's case it could have been a simple matter of a personality disorder, which he clearly had: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/28/bradley-manning.. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/28/bradley-manning.... ...in Snowden's case, being a sane, smart guy, he either thought he could get away with high crimes through a clever escape, or he was an agent for China, Russia, or even the NSA itself. There's no serious defense for either. And as has been said before, nothing that has been released is the least surprising to anyone paying attention.