And yet I believe crime exists regardless of its legality.
> Snowden released a trove of internal documents not vetted by the secret keepers
Why on earth should the secret keepers be the ones to vet documents about themselves when they are being whistleblown on?
> And yet I believe crime exists regardless of its legality.
Well over 99% of the time, the government does not go out of their way to break laws. I didn't claim that the fact that it is illegal proves they didn't do it. I simply said that the fact that it is illegal makes it more likely that they didn't do it. Do you disagree?
> Why on earth should the secret keepers be the ones to vet documents about themselves when they are being whistleblown on?
Who said they should? My point was that despite the fact that they weren't combed through by the secret keepers, the documents did not say that the NSA did the illegal things that GGP claimed. Instead, these documents supported the opposite conclusion — that the NSA didn't do those things — by repeatedly citing the laws that they follow that don't allow them to do those things.
They didn't have the legal right.
> All it took was one person willing to burn their career to provide the proof.
Snowden proved that the NSA does not vacuum everything up in the US and only vacuums everything in a few countries. You seem to be reading different documents from the ones that Snowden released.