> Why was only 1% of the documents published, in the end? “The documents are not like the WikiLeaks ones from the US state department, which were written by diplomats and, for the most part, easily understandable,” said Ewen MacAskill. “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.”

Ignoring the operational limitation requirement (of which there is no way it's 99% vs 1%), a capable public can make this determination; we do not need journalists doing it for us. I am uninterested in the journalistic value of these documents; I am interested in the public value of potentially knowing the content of those documents and how the government is surveilling us and/or abusing their authority.

>“The bottom line is that Snowden is facing charges under the Espionage Act. If he was ever to return to the US and face trial, the documents could be used against him.

Snowden knew this when he leaked the documents and he now resides, ironically, in one of the most surveilled countries in the world. He believed he was acting in the best interests on the public and is it NOT the job of journalists to protect a known source entity; they are to protect unknown sources.

Release MORE of the files, your profits and/or biased concerns for the journalistic value of the information shared be dammed. There is WAY more at stake.

> “The Snowden files are largely technical, with lots of codewords and jargon that is hard to decipher. There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in. There are also documents that relate to operational matters. Snowden said from the start he wanted us to report on issues related to mass surveillance, not operational matters. So we stuck to that.”

Sorry, was the point of these revelations to increase public interest (aka to make the newspapers money), or to bring accountability against the NSA? So far there has been nothing published that would give any individual standing to bring such a lawsuit. Is this because Snowden was naive, or because the journalists sacrificed real accountability for self-interest?

The answer is burried, here is the only real reason given:

When MacAskill replied: “The main reason for only a small percentage [being published] was diminishing interest [from the public]...”

This is insane. They have 99% of the leak under lock and key and they say the reason is because no one wants to see it? My guess is its a gag order/request, if they publish they will lose other access or something but why would this Ewen MacAskill, @ewenmacaskill feel comfortable lying so directly?

Snowden made a mistake in not dumping the whole archive to Wikileaks as was done with the US State Department cables and the CIA's Vault 7 files.

I think there's probably a lot more in those files that's of great embarrassment not just to the NSA and the US government in general (such as proof that it was conducting an illegal warrantless mass surveillance program in violation of US law) - but also to their collaborators in the private tech sector who seem to have been quite active participants in the program.

For example, one of the most revealing revelations was that NSA spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras - which is very hard to justify on national security grounds, and instead points to industrial espionage of the kind the NSA claims it doesn't engage in (as compared to China, etc.).

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-petr...

Journalistic integrity balancing with the national security interests of the most powerful nation on the planet is complicated. I am comfortable trusting the NYT to do their job.

I hope that eventually all the technical papers eventually are available out of nerdy curiosity, but I’d prefer that be through declassification and not espionage.

We need somebody to leak it

See also Pierre Omidyar investing $250m to create a news organization for Scahill, Greenwald and Poitros. Silver, or lead?

Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/the-intercept-the-first-online-p...

> “There are pages and pages of that which the public would not be interested in"

The point is that these documents have interesting content, but it would not sell newspapers so they don't want to invest time working on that... it's nothing related to the publics interest.

Because the people in charge are mainstream publishing professionals, who can't even come up with a good explanation

> the files are in the New York Times office

What a sham. The NYT has openly said many times that it allows the US Government to determine what is "fit to print". How did it come to this?

I strongly believe there was some level of collusion between Greenwald & the USG. How else did he get to have a successful media career in the West, while fellow publisher/journalist Assange rots in prison?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/government-censor...

Snowden is a hero. Unlike some bootlickers here