Let me make this explicit: I am not trying to address whether Snowden is lawful, chaotic, good, bad, or neutral. That is left as an excercise to the reader, tho

Let me make this explicit: I am not trying to address whether Snowden is lawful, chaotic, good, bad, or neutral. That is left as an excercise to the reader, though I guess I've proposed some of my ideas above, since that's apparently what you think I want to talk about. I am talking of Greenwald's argument. His argument, again, is as follows: once Snowden handed off the documents, he was absolved of moral responsibility in the matter because he gave the authority to release information to [a list of publications apparently excluding the NYT, but not in such a way as to prevent the NYT from collaborating with the institutions]. This argument seems willfully off-base, because without his participation - or, actually, his instigation - the journalists wouldn't have papers to release at all. He is obviously, then, the prime mover, and so trying to pretend that he doesn't exist as a moral agent is an exercise in willful ignorance.