"But Snowden’s case is actually a kind of reverse dead man’s switch, says John Prados, senior research fellow for the National Security Archive and author of several books on secret wars of the CIA. [...] “In the dead man switch, my positive control is necessary in order to prevent the eventuality [of an explosion],” Prados said. “In Snowden’s information strategy, he distributed sets of the information in such a fashion that if he is taken, then other people will move to release information. In other words, his positive control of the system is not required to make the eventuality happen. In fact, it’s his negative control that applies."
I'm really surprised it was implemented like that, I think using an actual, digital "dead man's switch" would have made more sense. Why not have 100 servers around the world running jobs to email out documents to 100 journalists at all times if an env variable isn't reset every few weeks? Then if he disappears or is killed, a few weeks later the jobs complete and email out the information?