I strongly disagree, but I respect that we're on the same side here, so I'll very carefully consider your logic. But in return, I'd ask you to carefully consider my argument, which is that we need to know the current damage right now far more than we need allies in the Senate IC in the future.

This is why I think Snowden is such a sharp guy, because of the fact that he has been releasing documents slowly and methodically as opposed to a mega-dump wikileaks style disclosure. The basic problem is that a large share of the American public (such as my mom) get their information from exclusively one source. In my mother's case it's CNN, where there hasn't been very much coverage of this other than the odd report here and there. For instance looking at CNN right now the main headline is an article about this most recent school shooting, and the NSA revelations are a small print link jumbled in with lots of other unrelated articles.

Of course I did. My stand is this: what the US needs now, possibly more than any time before in its history, is for the full extent of the surveillance and other activities by the NSA and other IC members to be revealed to the public. What happens next year in the Senate Intelligence Committee is much less important.