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Snowden was far from the first to publicise NSA surveillance.

Snowden documented that surveillance in vastly more detail than had been done before, and deserves the thanks of citizens of the US and world for doing so.

(I listed a number of pre-Snowden revelations a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27184956)

> the intelligence agency has monitored [...] hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people [...] over the last three years

That doesn't strike me as worse than what Snowden revealed. PRISM and the rest of those programs intercepted communications of hundreds of millions of people each year.

Because Edward Snowden is the Miley Cyrus of SIGINT. Or maybe a Kardashian, I don’t know, it’s kind of a toss up.