> Let's set aside the question of whether what Snowden did was right or wrong for a moment, and look at the situation objectively and logically, and taking into

> Let's set aside the question of whether what Snowden did was right or wrong for a moment, and look at the situation objectively and logically, and taking into account the NSA's perspective. By definition, if you take into account the NSA perspective, I don't think you're being objective (nor logical). > However, let's set Snowden's trustworthiness aside for a moment I think that's really a bit of an attack with a strong suggestion of untrustworthiness which you're pretending to not comment on whilst actually reinforcing a claim of the NSA/US/UK Government - for some reason the UK seems to be most strongly critical of Snowden from my experience. > We know that at least one of the people involved was not particularly good at operational security You refer to David Miranda but omit to mention that it was MI5 in the UK who put the pressure on. You were front and center will accusations against the Chinese and Russians but strangely it's Snowden's fault when it's the 'friendly' UK doing the pressuring. From a strategic perspective, there was little 'lost' by giving MI5 the files since they would already have had access to the material (so it tells them nothing new) and would know from their own access logs that Snowden had them (so, again, nothing new gained). I understand Miranda handing them over as, in the UK, he has no prospect of protection by the courts (which, paradoxically, he possibly would have had in the US). The encryption alone would be sufficient to jail him for many years in the UK and it was value-less to resist. If you didn't have a reasonable karma, I would think your comment was carefully placed propaganda/character assassination on behalf of a TLA. I don't think it serves anyone to take such a biased position on Snowden and side with the governments who have created such a massive breach of privacy on the bogus claims of protecting us from terrorists (something which they have miserably failed in). As other comments have already made clear, the information breaches as much more likely to have occurred through other security breaches and hacks - publicly disclosed - than through the Snowden files. At nation-state level, you can be pretty sure a large proportion of classified material is generally known. Effort is only made to keep the really sensitive stuff secure and, from breaches like the vetting records, we know that's probably little more than a hit-or-miss affair.