Snowden is an embarrassment for those who use human rights, freedom and democracy to further other interests. Hence the deafening silence. The entire ecosystem that supports dissenters with asylum, grand freedom narratives and wall to wall coverage about evil regimes and heroic protest closed shop for Snowden, Assange, Manning and others.
Imagine the hysteria of the 'free world' in unison against the totalitarian chinese if there was no Snowden and a chinese dissenter leaked something like this, and his or her subsequent global fame as a defender of freedom. Now look as Snowden stranded in Russia and Assange in the Ecuador embassy. That is the pathetic state of pretension.
And instead of demonizing others and filling pages upon pages scaremongering about totalitarian surveillance vs democracy, its surveillance that is being demoted to a lesser transgression, even something 'acceptable' if not 'necessary', and that's what Snowden changed.