While Snowden is probably correct, in that these events further solidify the process of governing outside of direct consent, i.e. “in the light”, this has more or less been normal operation for decades.

In part, this transition is due to the release of Edward Bernays' highly influential Propaganda in 1928, which was said to have “killed democracy in order to save it”. In the book, Bernays attempted to make the point that:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

There’s no question that Snowden performed a valuable service as far as shedding light on the government’s self-appointed powers and prompting some sort of public debate to occur. Even NSA director James Clapper has admitted this much:

As loath as I am to give any credit to what’s happened here, I think it’s clear that some of the conversations this has generated, some of the debate, actually needed to happen.

Although we have largely done it the best, America has a relatively spotty record when it comes to true democracy. There have been undulating periods of democratic vigor and total apathy.

Overall, this has gotten progressively worse and the U.S. now has what some would call a “guided democracy.”

Again, the nature of the people’s information is crucial for a well-functioning democracy. Contrary to popular belief, Americans are about as equally “informed” bout government institutions and actions as they were 50 years ago. However, according to research, this not to say we are well-informed:

..the “average” citizen is woefully uninformed about political institutions, processes, substantive policies and socioeconomic conditions, and important political actors such as elected officials and political parties.

This might be partly due to our government leadership, who tend to question the “governability of democracies”, as well as irrational importance placed on public image/relations, rather than facts, in U.S. popular media.

Notice the words below (my emphasis):

it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy…

The hesitancy to firmly state that broad public support = legitimacy, comes from the fact that the legitimacy of a decision inherently depends on its underlying reasoning, i.e. the quantity and quality of the known facts and how they led to the decision.

This is the crutch of Snowden’s statement about legitimacy. We know from history that citizens will allow some pretty heinous acts to occur if the facts aren’t all there.

Snowden brings up a good point here. This problem exists far beyond the level of individual privacy concerns. This is something that Americans must collectively decide, and whatever they finally decide, whether right or wrong, so it shall be.

I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Arguably the biggest revelation to come from Snowden’s work is that the NSA has spent the last decade critically undermining internet security, in two major ways:

• Sabotaging encryption keys: Pretty much everything we do on the internet is protected by encryption, e.g. email, web browsing, banking, etc. Unfortunately, the NSA has been sabotaging international encryption standards for some time now.
• Bribing corporations to create back doors: While sabotaging widely used encryption standards was simple enough, it was not so easy for the NSA to vacuum up all that juicy data stored on the private systems of big tech companies. To circumvent this, they simply paid those companies millions to create secret back doors to their security systems.

It’s no wonder that Chinese hackers have had a field day rummaging through Western networks over the past year…

The report Snowden is referring to in this interview was the highly classified, 2009 Inspector General’s report on Stellar Wind aka bulk metadata collection.

This was where it all started…

Not only was this the beginning of the governments wide-scale exploitation of the internet, but it was also where Snowden finally decided to act. After accidentally finding a copy of the highly classified document, and reading what it laid out, Snowden began taking further action to collect documents.

As soon as the story broke in the summer of 2013, there was a lot of hoopla regarding this idea that Snowden was globe-trotting around the world, with some of the most devastating U.S. national intelligence secrets wantonly stashed away on his personal computer.

The brainiacs at the NSA can’t even figure out which documents Snowden snagged from their system, so it’s incredibly difficult to imagine he’d make a rookie mistake like saving this stuff on his laptop. As the previous annotation noted, these documents are stashed away in parts of the web that very few people even realize exist.

News flash: the documents aren’t actually stored in the computer, guys.

However, don’t try and tell that to the British government officials…Though it was more than likely an act of intimidation, British officials actually busted up the Guardian’s hard drives in an attempt to destroy the documents:

You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back..

If Snowden’s intentions were to sell off U.S. secrets, we probably never would have heard of him or PRISM. Obviously that isn’t the case.

Though he has worked with Wikileaks' attorneys, Snowden has distanced himself from the organization’s approach when it comes to handling sensitive documents. He’s been meticulous in his review of intelligence before passing the information on to journalists.

Interestingly enough, though, he did set up a “dead man’s switch”, with documents stashed out in the deep web in the case that anything were to happen to him:

A former U.S. counterintelligence officer following the Snowden saga closely said his contacts inside the U.S. intelligence community “think Snowden has been planning this for years and has stashed files all over the Internet.” This source added, “At this point there is very little anyone can do about this.”