I’m claiming they are being vague.

Something can be technically true, and while it is given a framing that is far out of proportion with the supporting evidence.

> > a government that routinely and flagrantly lies to its citizens You are biased.

Snowden’s leaks demonstrated that what I said is a fact, and no one in the government even disputes the content of those leaks!

> How do you explain what he damaged at a technical level without revealing classified information?

I don’t know, but that does mean you just get to exclaim “it’s classified!!!” And I magically just have to believe everything you say.

> Please show evidence that anything in the report is not accurate.

The report provided no evidence to dispute. Again, the national security apparatus has shown itself time and again to not be trustworthy: gulf of Tonkin, wmd in Iraq, warrantless surveillance, spying on its own citizens and lying about it to congress under oath (and getting away with it with no consequences). Flagrantly violating the law (Iran contra), etc etc.

I’d rather be “biased” than a rube.

They said there were 13 risks and that 8 would be bad/endanger troops if China and or Russia were aware. That’s it. How many troops? Endanger them how? What kind of information are talking about? Sources and methods? Weapons systems? Other technology? Literally any detail???

I understand your position is that “they’re in a bind”. Well, there shouldn’t have squandered their reputation by lying about major issues facing the American people like war making, mass surveillance, illegal activities, etc.

Finally, the sheer number of documents he extracted was a red herring/immaterial to nation security. All that matters is content.

Edit: a move careful reading of the report demonstrates that the 1.5 million number appears to only refer to the number of non blank documents that were downloaded, it is not at all clear that the is any way for the government to get a precise measurement of what Snowden actually took with him to Hong Kong and disclosed. Anything that hasn’t been disclosed in public would therefore be purely speculative on the part of the US government.

Edit 2: a more careful reading of the section that outlines how he took the documents shows that “removed” simply constitutes the number of documents that he downloaded off of the respective NSA networks onto his local machines while at work. It says nothing about what he actually took offsite. Everything in the risk assessments are purely speculative based on what he had access to from the automated downloads he implemented.