It doesn't discredit Snowden that he didn't clear up the confusion that results from folks not wanting to believe what it literally says in the authentic deck. He says he was an IT guy, but not the one who personally installed every undersea fiber tap or interception device.

Snowden's undoing may be trying to have the baby half way. People are really pissed off about this and are going to be looking for someone to blame. I wonder if he's going to end up looking even worse than Assange in the end by assuming personal responsibility for the effectiveness of the selective editing and redaction.

Personally, I don't feel like the weight of this story turns on the specifics of the interception hardware and the "directness" of the access. There's a slide deck that says "Dates when PRISM collection began for each provider" and "Collection of communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past". And that's just the four slides that The Guardian and WaPo didn't feel were too hot to handle.