I remember him specifically saying he thought spying on allies was wrong, and even a key component of his decision. Whether you agree this is the deciding point for crime / not crime, it is certainly a division between blowing whistle on domestic spying and everything else.

I think that from a purely technical point of view there isn't a division here: if the NSA has gained access to basically everything (mobile networks, ISPs, landlines, OSs etc) and they're using the access to hoover up all the private data of citizens then logically our allies and enemies know they are also being targeted don't they? Why would the NSA be using God Mode domestically but restricting itself abroad?

So Snowden even revealed everything or nothing. He couldn't only spill half the beans!

Why not? 99% of the things Greenwald et al published from his leaks were perfectly legal, and that was just a small subset of the total documents Snowden leaked. Why not just expose the illegal phone metadata program? If he had done that, he would easily qualify as a whistleblower.

Exposing the phone meta data program would expose it both domestically and internationally. That exposure would limit the US ability to keep doing it internationally and open him to exactly the critism made above.

The issue here is that none of these programs care about national boundaries (or citizenship etc). So exposing domestic surveillance exposed it internationally as well. There was no way to avoid that. So criticism of it seems unfair to me...

Also, 99% of the programs he exposed were Illegal. Some have been legalised after the fact, others semi legalised.

SCOTUS has refused to rule on any of it, so the ultimate compatibility with the constitution remains unclear...

> Also, 99% of the programs he exposed were Illegal.

The only US program he leaked that was illegal was the phone metadata collection. The vast majority of programs he leaked involved surveillance on foreign targets outside the US.

> SCOTUS has refused to rule on any of it

None of it has made it to SCOTUS due to the vast majority being completely legal, so SCOTUS hasn't even had a chance to refuse to rule on any of it. The only program that could have gone to SCOTUS was phone metadata collection, but the government already shut that down, so they aren't going to waste time challenging its legality.