The part that you are missing is that the media and people who have worked in government are calling him a traitor and suggesting many of things you have said the administration has not done. This means what you say is technically true but misses the important fact that the media has become a tool of the state. The administration can just sit back and let the agents of the state work in the media. See James Woolsey on CNN recently for an example.

Ron Paul said it best when he said "Truth is treason in an empire of lies." Snowdon may have broken the law but he exposed the higher law (the 4th amendment to the US constitution) is being violated at will all day every day.

I actually just hope that Snowdon exposed the worst thing that the NSA was doing. I suspect he did not.