Also don't forget about Manning who actually went to prison and is not getting any publicity now.
Edit: That being said, if we ever do get evidence that China or Russia did manage to get that data during his trip there, I'd change my tune immediately. That would be high treason, at least if it was intentional.
I guess you'll be changing your tune when you find out China and Russia read the papers containing all the TS/SCI and ECI leaks. They definitely have the information. ;)
Plus, as someone who held a clearance in the DoD (former interrogator), I will say it can be hard (especially for someone like those journalists who never held a clearance) to tell what can directly hurt someone else. Handing off NSA program documents could have potentially put the lives of CIA and NSA agents and sources around the world...but we would never know. Even the families of those people wouldn't know. All they would know is that their family member didn't come home.
Snowden complained loudly about a test answer. That's it.
The point in that riveting doc was simple, those that complained too loudly lost everything, thankfully not their lives.
1. A pile of unredacted, classified, and legitimate operations in the hand of foreigners which included at least two being targeted by them. They should've never had this information. He could have cherry-picked it to whistleblowing stuff during time he organized all of it but didn't. I'd have done the opposite to protect legit ops and sources.
2. He put all that at risk of foreign agencies, esp in Russia or China, getting it given their hackers are badass while reporters' IT groups are... average. After seeing Citizenfour, I was pretty confident his stuff could've been grabbed multiple times if he didn't have the element of surprise. It was also clear his tradecraft was weak vs what I read about in espionage non-fiction. I bet the journalists more so.
So, definitely parallels to Manning. I expected it from Manning over Snowden given Manning was a stressed-out youth going through an identity crisis in a war zone whereas Snowden was a trained spy claiming moral high ground in general and aiming to protect decent people. I'm not letting him off on dumping the foreign stuff. Especially while many of the targets do the same shit to us with local, legal protections for their own spies doing it. He needs to own up to that.
The truth. You deserve to know what crimes are committed in your name.
Didn't he?