When marginalized youths commit minor infractions, we as a society turn a blind eye as they suffer insufferable consequences in the world's largest prison system, yet when the richest and most powerful telecommunications providers in the country knowingly commit tens of millions of felonies, Congress passes our nation's first law providing their elite friends with full retroactive immunity--civil and criminal--for crimes that would have merited the longest sentences [] in history.

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,and that the return of this information to the public marks my end. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed for even an instant. If you seek to help, join the open source community and fight to keep the spirit of the press alive and the internet free. I have been to the darkest corners of the government, and what they fear is light.

Taken in its entirety, the Snowden archive led to an ultimately simple conclusion: the U.S. government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide.

(Glenn Greenwald writes...)
Congressman Alan Grayson wrote to Attorney General Holder, noting that prominent political figures called for my arrest and that I had had to decline an invitation to testify before Congress about the NSA due to concerns about possible prosecution. He concluded the letter saying:

I regard this as regrettable because (1) the commission of journalism is not a crime; (2) on the contrary, it is protected explicitly under the First Amendment; (3) Mr. Greenwald's reports regarding these subjects have, in fact, informed me, other members of Congress, and the general public of serious, pervasive violations of law and constitutional rights committed by agents of the government.

...Snowden...has reminded everyone about the extraordinary ability of any human being to change the world. An ordinary person in all outward respects--raised by parents without particular wealth or power, lacking even a high school diploma, working as an obscure employee of a giant corporation--he has, through a single act of conscience, literally altered the course of history.