Yeah, I don't see the evidence, unfortunately. Weird article. The lede - NSA released a bunch of documents yesterday - is buried in the final paragraph.

Think there's strong evidence their whistleblower protections are lacking. Think it's clear the NSA is trying desperately to damage control the situation. While it's possible Snowden attempted to go through the proper channels (and I'd love to see evidence of this), the documents linked in this article only show him testing the waters.

The fact Snowden doesn't want to respond is a pretty good sign this isn't a slam dunk for the anti-spying contingent.

"[Snowden] believes the NSA is still playing games with selective releases, and [he] therefore chooses not to participate in this effort," Wizner said. "He doesn't trust that the intelligence community will operate in good faith."

I think the reason Snowden calls it a game is because he feels the NSA isn't interested in finding out what actually happened.

I think your right that Snowden was "testing the waters" and my guess is he came to the honest conclusion that public disclosure was necessary for there to be even debate on the issue of mass surveillance and there needed to be one.

This article is almost a conspiracy itself! Haha I really went through it slowly, and unless I missed something...it really doesn't seem to read the government was repressing documents...more they just struggled to find all the emails. From what I can tell no document was revealed which shows Snowden really raised concerns in the way he claims. The title of the article is definitely misleading and sensationalist.

> The title of the article is definitely misleading and sensationalist.

I had forgotten what the title was in the process of reading the article. You're right, it's a near perfect example of spun journalism.

Consider the following:

> Because none of the people interviewed by the NSA in the wake of the leaks said that "Snowden mentioned a specific NSA program," and "many" of the people interviewed "affirmed that he never complained about any NSA program," the NSA's counterintelligence chief concluded that these conversations about the Constitution and privacy did not amount to raising concerns about the NSA's spying activities.

> That was the basis for the agency's public assertions — including those made by Ledgett during a TED talk later that month — that Snowden never attempted to voice his concerns about the scope of NSA surveillance while at the agency.

Note the infrequent 'Because ... Than ...' type of construct -- but that a particular fact is selected for the 'Because ...' clause it inclines the reader to believe that something is being omitted or hidden from public view (one spuriously continues reading the article hoping to find what it was) - but all the reader gets is:

> Snowden declined to answer a number of very specific questions for this story.

The whole article is written as if something is hidden, omitted and about to come into view! How else to justify the headline title!? But there's really nothing at all.

Yes I agree it was misleading. At most the article established that the US government was making statements that implied a greater certainty than what they had.

I read the whole thing and the content of the article certainly doesn't reflect the headline. The only "revelation" in the article is that Snowden followed up on the one email released by the NSA in person and may have discussed some issues there. In particular he was concerned about the content of the training he was taking and where it was accurate.

What's reasonably new-ish news here is that Snowden had engaged about a failed certification test in person and separately from the Executive Order clarification e-mail.

What's not proven in these docs, but seems at least imaginable perhaps even probable, is that the 702 test contained questions which required answers based on an expired law. That expired law gave analysts much more leeway than they currently had.

If that's what happened, I think we can understand at least partly why Snowden claims he raised more serious concerns, and simultaneously why NSA did not consider complaints about failing his test when evaluating how he had engaged.

Same here, in a way. Seems like he has actually not "reported these clearly problematic programs to more than 10 distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them.", as he stated in front of the EU parliament.

To be fair to Snowden the evidence we have is just those in emails. If he raised issues in person we don't have any evidence that he didn't.