While I fully support what they are doing, I am a bit irked that they always talk about documents which prove the NSA is doing this or that, but they never show the documents.
All they do is make assertions and occasionally show a cryptic powerpoint slide, out of supposedly many.
Naturally we want to believe them, and their persecution only makes them more credible, but why don’t they just show us the documents?
I think Greenwald actually understands the skepticism and even admits he’d be skeptical as well if he was in your position. He tries to address it directly here:
http://utdocuments.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/email-exchange-with-reader-over-first.html
and here:
http://utdocuments.blogspot.com.br/2013/12/questionsresponses-for-journalists.html
A highlight from first link above:
" … in his Washington Post interview with Snowden last month, Bart Gellman noted “Snowden’s insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents published in bulk.” From the start, Snowden indeed repeatedly insisted on that.
Anyone who demands that we “release all documents” - or even release large numbers in bulk - is demanding that we violate our agreement with our source, disregard the framework we created when he gave us the documents, jeopardize his interests in multiple ways, and subject him to far greater legal (and other) dangers. I find that demand to be unconscionable, and we will never, ever violate our agreement with him no matter how many people want us to.
That said, we have published an extraordinary number of top secret NSA documents around the world in a short period of time. And our work is very far from done: there are many, many more documents and stories that we will publish.
Toward that end, we have very carefully increased the number of journalists and experts who are working on these documents and who have access to them. We are now working with more experts in cryptography and hacking than ever. One of the most exciting things about our new organization is that we now have the resources to process and report these documents more quickly and efficiently than ever before, consistent with ensuring that we don’t make the kinds of errors that would allow others to attack the reporting.
These documents are complex. Sometimes they take a good deal of reporting to fill in some of the gaps. From the start, people have been eager for us to make serious mistakes so they can exploit them to discredit the reporting, and so we work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. That takes time. Convincing media institutions (and their armies of risk-averse lawyers, editors and executives) to publish documents, the aggressive way we think they need to be published, also often takes a lot of time. … "
If you have some time, read the rest here. I think it may address at least some of your questions you have about the release methodologies and perhaps challenges you may not have been aware of, etc.
It appears you have an open mind and this may be helpful to you, but I’m sure there’s others out there that will continue to focus just as much or even more scrutiny on the messengers than the perpetrators in the NSA, etc. - But, there’s always that peanut gallery that tries to knock down anyone else who stands up for what is right even as they themselves have never bothered to stand up for anything themselves. A lot of self-frustration and projection at play, I suspect.
I won’t address them directly. But you know who you are.
