>Snowden's aim was to damage the US and its allies, and he succeeded in this.

Dude, nobody's buying this nonsense. Snowden expressed his concerns multiple times. He talked about the surveillance enabling turn-key tyranny, if ever a fascist leader would rise into power in the US. And look what's happening now. He was right, and thank god he blew the whistle, as that gave privacy activists a decade long headstart to get end-to-end encryption deployed.