Whistleblowing is needed to keep the minions honest, and Snowden did blow the whistle, despite administration/NSA attempts to tar him as a traitor to his nation.
However, Yahoo News carried an arguably pertinent Reuters feed, "NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access." Snowden, in Hawaii - a nice place to be - in the article is characterized as having had system administrator duties. He worked for Booze, Allen, Hamilton; not NSA directly, but there are distinctions without any real differences. Who signed the check, and its amount in the outside contractor feeding trough may have differed, but it was ultimately taxpayer money going to spying on taxpayers. Go figure that.
So, in among the palm and coconut trees, was there disturbing office rumor, or memos handed down about human skill sets being phased out in favor of machines? In Britain in the early 1800's the breaking of looms had a period in fashion, with it even having been made a capital offense against the state. Ned Ludd, all that. Snowden? It is only a guess. The headline quote is from the online item, midway through it.
UPDATE: Register, here.
More, a secure email provider folds, Register reporting here.