It's interesting that you'd call my comment "hopeless" and conclude your response by agreeing with part of it. Clearly, that must indicate some glimmer of hope. :)
1) The leak that the NSA has been spying on people. If you've been following along for the past few years, the fact that they could do this isn't really news. However, the potential scope of the program certainly is. This is also the least well reported part of the story because only two organizations have the full contents of the leak and are only publishing select parts. I doubt we'll ever get a complete picture of the current NSA program, since so much of it is classified. It's hard to get corroborating evidence when you have to rely on intelligence employees leaking fragments of information. And, unfortunately, Snowden is really too low level of an informant to get a complete picture with context. His leak can give some ideas of scope and capability, but very little in terms of how the data is really collected, how often are US citizens caught up in it (mistakenly or not), and how the data is used/mined.
2) There is also the story of the leaker himself, Snowden. Who is he, what are is motivations, etc... Some of this can be found out with old-fashioned journalism, but a lot of it will be pure speculation. There will be a lot of reporting on this story simply because it's easier. Anyone can speculate about his motivations, and only a limited amount of people will actually talk to him.
3) There is also the rather more interesting (in my opinion) aspect of how the NSA and government's intelligence apparatus works. For example, how did we get to the point where a contractor can have access to the types of information that Snowden claimed to have access to. Why are there so many contractors that are extremely well paid? How much of US intelligence relies on outsourced work? etc...
4) Then there is the rather dull, but probably more important for society aspect of how much privacy do we (US citizens) want to give up in the name of security. How much oversight will we demand? This will probably be the least covered part of the story. It's hard and political, so it probably won't be covered nearly as much.
5) Finally, there are the international aspects of the NSA program. In the US, if you are a citizen or physically in the US, you are protected by the 4th amendment (with a few exceptions). However, none of the constitutional protections are granted to foreign persons or data that travels or is hosted in the US. I suspect that this will be the most covered aspect of the story internationally, but will hardly make a blip in the US.
So, my point in all of this, is to agree that Snowden is largely irrelevant to the contents of the leak, but that he, himself, is very much a part of the larger story. It's important to look at each part of the story separately, since while they are intertwined, they are largely independent stories.
It's worth noting that Snowden has far greater knowledge of the score than the public does; the Guardian has many unreleased documents whose contents Snowden is obviously aware of. The fact that he's talking about things not directly backed up by what his newspaper contact has chosen to yet publish doesn't necessarily mean that he's making it about him.
Which makes those claims inconclusive regardless of Snowdens character.
Google has motivation to bring clarity to their role in all of this. The NSA would rather keep everything secret. I'd believe Google more too...
Note that the slides have different degrees of redaction across sources. These links should together cover what's available on PRISM.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...
The material that's actually been disclosed is, what, 3 powerpoint slides? Almost everything else is simply wild speculation.
So why not ignore the noise & leave it for the gossip pages while focussing on the bigger picture?
To not be vanished. Come on man.
My experience with reporters (and news producers) is that they get you to say things under one pretense, and it gets swung around with little empathy towards another to tell the story they want to tell (not necessarily out of malice, often just because they want to tell a different story than the facts do).
I'm not claiming he's some sort of saint and he's accurate (or even sure) of all that he's saying, but I'm sure reporters are eating him for lunch and pulling all sorts of shit out of him.
He had to give interviews to raise his profile enough for questions to be asked if he vanished to pre-empt those attempts.