> the perspective of anyone committing an embarrassing or morally unscrupulous act

In this instance it was embarrassing because it brought into question how well the US would be able to keep secret strategic information.

And yeah hacking into allies is pretty unscrupulous. A bunch of the Snowden leaks showed that Israel, France, Germany and others have hacked into us.

It's the way it all works.

> Secrets of this nature have a tendency to leak. If it wasn't Snowden, it could've been anyone else

There were many such leaks, e.g. Binney.

> reporting of confirmed infiltrations of US and allied companies and systems is fine by my book

I agree wholeheartedly with this.