A few points:

1. Why couldn't he leak anonymously?

Because there are a limited number of people who have access to that data, and he would almost certainly be uncovered in the ensuing investigation. By revealing himself to the public now, he gets a certain amount of protection from disappearing to a black detention site in the former soviet empire, never to be heard from again. That might still happen, but at least people will ask, whatever happened to Snowden?

2. You cannot be free if you're always being watched. Very disturbing to see some people in this thread pretty much arguing for 1984. Simply knowing that somebody could be watching you has a profound psychological impact on your behaviour. Every action has to be examined for the potential consequences of others seeing you. To be free, we need spaces where we can act free of judgement.

Very disturbing that terrorism (Which is possibly the smallest threat Western civilization has ever faced. I'm pretty sure McDonalds kills more Americans every year.) is being used to justify this creeping fascism. And I don't even identify myself as a libertarian.

3. The entire Snowden leak is a compelling case against PRISM and similar projects. Think about it. One rogue sysadmin uses access to classified NSA data to further his personal agenda. This time the agenda is privacy and freedom. Next time, classified NSA data could be used to secure a political victory, or to sell a military researcher's activities to China.

And abuse doesn't require a rogue operative, either. The NSA doesn't need to get encryption keys from Google or MS to know who everybody associates with and when they associate with them. To prevent future leaks, the NSA could easily use its metadata storehouse to block the security clearance of anybody who has ever sent or recieved emails from the ACLU or the EFF.

As this blog post demonstrates, if the British Empire had PRISM in the 18th century, the American revolution may never have happened:

http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/

That's what you think. But the entertainment conglomerates do care about piracy. And the US government only works for the US corporations.

It is an interesting question. My personal view is that Snowden was right to leak the information. If Citizens privacy is being abused by the government in the name of security, the public should at the very least be informed about it.

However, I don't think Snowden handled it very well. He should have stayed in the country and pushed through the backlash. If he was right, the American people would have his back. He would be tried for releasing classified information, but it would have elevated him to a huge stature here in America. If he had stayed and actually gotten jail time, I doubt it would have been for very long. There would be protests and eventually the politicians would have come to back him as well as it would have been the popular thing to do. He chose to flee instead. It has kind of revealed an interesting hypocrisy in his character. He released the information in the name of freedom, but yet he is seeking asylum in some of the least free countries in the world.

Basically, I think releasing the information and getting the message to the people was appropriate, but I think the messenger and his actions afterwards was flawed.

Oh, I just found this little gem:

 Said Ronald Bailey in a piece published in September of 2011, "a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.

Just imagine the launch of multiple wars, ongoing drone strikes and special ops, intrusive and abusive TSA screenings, and a communications surveillance program that's the envy of every dictator outside of China, all done to protect Americans from lightning strikes.

Get on board people. You should have nothing to hide if you're not a golfer. You're either with us, or you're with the weather.

A hero, a real effin' hero. Nobody here would have done the same.

Pretty sure its the US corporations that give the gov't billions of dollars in tax money every year but sure.

They used to say that about Nelson Mandela.

Oh well. Time makes fools of us all.......

yeah the fear of terrorism is way overblown.
Investing the same amount of resources into education or anything else that fights social inequality, would save much more lives.

Corporate income tax is dwarfed by personal income tax in the US. The ratio is around 4:1.

But that's mostly beside the point. The people who run government don't care about that money. They get to spend it on behalf of citizens but they don't get to keep very much of it. They care about the money that gets them elected (and the influence that gets them a golden parachute should they fail to get elected). That's the market where politicians are bought and sold in US politics. And busines is booming.

And in response to your OP, you should be less concerned about the next 9/11 and more worried about the next thunderstorm. Ionized clouds hate us for our ground.

Devil's advocate here, but couldn't the overzealous spying programs be what makes those odds so good?