Your point is valid only assuming the government wasn't aware of the thing and would have acted differently in perfect good faith, but real world ain't fairies and unicorns: politicians are blood and flesh mortals who can be corrupt exactly as every normal citizen. We'll never know the answer to a what-if different situation, but if I had a time machine to check, I'd bet everything that, had Snowden informed the government in advance, he would probably be dead of "natural causes" by now.

I always get downvoted when I talk about Snowden because people want to see it in all or nothing terms like you do but our governments don't just go around killing people that are trying to do the right thing.

Plus, if he wanted, he could have always set up a complex insurance scheme so that if he died the documents came out.

Honest, I wouldn't have taken the risk either in his place. Going to your local senator sounds overly naive.

We can agree to disagree, but I think what he did was the smart play there. Here's why I think so. Who in the government should he have gone to? We're talking about a lot of reps and senators, some of whom are either on intelligence committees (and possibly approving these actions, or at least the autonomy of those making those choices), or people who are beholden to those congressional members who are. Or he could have gone to people who have no experience with this or no influence to do anything.

Given what he knew of what happened to people who "work against" the US, do you really think the Bradley/Chelsea Manning option was one he wanted to risk?

I don't think our government is full of corrupt, evil and hateful people trying to kill as many people as they can.

Instead, I think it's full of hard working, well meaning people who succumb to the same pressures and tunnel vision that we all do. And sometimes, those people, under pressure from us, the populace, make them try to find solutions that may inch towards tyranny without us knowing it.

Snowden is an idealist, but he needed to show that same populace what our desire for safety was leading to.

I don't believe the guy should be deified, but I don't think he actually matters other than as a part of history and someone who showed us a mirror.

And I don't think you should dump on the fact that he handed them to journalists.

They literally are one of our government's greatest resources in keeping it honest. Not because it's an inherently noble profession, but specifically because our freedom of the press allowed them to have incentives in routing out corruption, whether that's money or fame, etc.

why not?

(it's purely a question to know why not, not a provocation)

Because the power of one individual keeps going up. Just relying only on your own judgement without at least deferring first to a higher authority and attempting to get the issue addressed with their help is reckless and could get a lot of people killed.

Yes people should take a personal stand sometimes, but they shouldn't start there. I understand that previous NSA whistleblowers were gutted, and that was stupid of the NSA because that secret was getting out at some point, but in either case talking to a senator is way, way, way better than talking to a random journalist. There are plenty of reasons not to talk to journalists, not the least of which is that they're often spies. Bringing all the material to Hong Kong was also reckless, though it is possible he took countermeasures to stop himself from giving up the password if he got tortured at the border.