Comment by andrewmutz

I disagree that he did it in the least destructive way possible. He revealed far more secrets than were necessary to blow the whistle.

Just take a look at the list of secrets he revealed. Most of them are not about domestic spying at all:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations

If he wanted to blow the whistle on domestic spying, he could have shared documents with journalists about domestic spying.