What has he said that's particularly creative?

The substance of his claims is extremely plausible and consistent with facts that have been long known.

The creativity bit was about the conspiracy theories of others, not things that he's said.

I do think that things he's said and things he's done actually undermine his stated cause. He started out by portraying himself as a conscience-driven individual who wants to expose what he believes are gross violations of civil liberties without becoming a focal point of the story.

He's now made himself the center of the story, has expanded his motivation to moral outrage at all forms of spying, etc. Add to this the various inaccuracies, melodramatic over-statements, tangents into matters entirely unrelated to civil liberties, and really, just the act of flight to begin with.

It seems to me that much of the time he does or says something he's moving perception away from somewhere on the the 'mildly ambivalent moral actor' end of the spectrum where he started and towards 'clueless opportunist'.

That's a terrible thing because, and I agree with you, a number of the things he says are not just extremely plausible but important matters of civic discourse.

I think he's doing a ridiculously good job for an individual taking on the largest military intelligence organization in the world without lawyers or paid political consultants.

I'm not sure how you would expect him to conduct this disclosure without the "act of flight" or "becoming a focal point of the story".

I suppose I'd expect him to conduct himself like, well, just about every other whistleblower before him. Just yesterday three high level NSA whistleblowers gave a joint interview to USA Today. All three still in the US and none in prison. One of them, William Binney, while being generally supportive of Snowden went as far as to call some of his actions traitorous.

Or, say, here's a take by Slate's resident libertarian: http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/06/17/snowden_veers_i...

When your natural support constituency starts saying things like that you have a serious (and, inexplicably, self-created) image problem. I believe this is an actual thing rather than, you know, you and me just shooting the shit on a nerd message board.

None of those three (bless their hearts) were anywhere near as effective in getting their message to the public as Snowden.

No doubt, but that's also why the concern that he may be turning himself from 'effective' to 'ineffectual' is so much greater.

I guess the simplest way I can put it is - I wish he'd stop taking his cues from journalists, however high-minded and well-intentioned and start working with a local lawyer specializing in human rights and civil liberties issues, yesterday.

I suppose that with the wikileaks precedent, he would assume they would have thrown him in solitary confinement, with no access to the press, which would defeat the purpose of his leaking the info.

Not to be a conspiracy-theory hipster, but I suggested this before we even knew who he was. I thought the timing was suspicious, how it completely erased the discussion of the completely-confirmed Verizon phone records business, and replaced with a whole load of doubt and speculation. The shittiness of the Powerpoints (supposedly for training but containing all the detail of "Illegal Surveillance for The Layman") and the choice of newspapers (Guardian and Washington Post? The hell? Someone trying to make the Post look good?) didn't encourage. Then this guy turns up with EFF and Tor stickers plastered all over his laptop, claiming he doesn't want to be the center of attention while making himself the center of attention, and the internet collectively creams their jeans.

Personally I think he's too over the top - a perfect caricature. I have met people who work the security services, and they are not the kind of people who put stickers on their laptops, EFF or otherwise. I additionally posit that if you worked for the NSA and really wanted to disclose secrets, and had the kind of access he is supposed to have had, you could have leaked much more specific, damaging things than this. His reluctance to reveal more detailed information about the NSA, even without proof, is fairly damning.

If I were him, and the cat were properly out of the bag now and there were talks of extra-judicial killings, and I was talking a big talk about dying for my country, I wouldn't be running my mouth about democracy. I'd be running my mouth about the damn NSA.

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Naomi Wolf of all people said so three days ago.