> Well, it was a lot of data, so he passed it to an organization that supposedly had people who could sift through it and post the relevant stuff in redacted form. Unfortunately, those people screwed up and published the encryption key for the unredacted data.
That is exactly what was illegal. When Manning couldn't be bothered to even choose what data to leak or not he lost the ability to claim any kind of moral high ground over what happened to it. Unless he personally knew and could trust everyone with access in the WikiLeaks organization he had no way of even truly knowing what would happen if he leaked data that was dangerous to the U.S. or other people.
That's not just a theoretical tweak either; WikiLeaks has had at least two major instances of insiders in the news that don't fully agree with Assange, including the one of their higher-ups, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Additionally, whether a leak has been published is completely orthogonal to the question of whether that leak was discriminate. You're right that it's hard to tell that Snowden's leaks are discriminate until the extent of them has been published, but it's at least possible that Snowden chose each leaked briefing judiciously and precisely.
That is exactly what was illegal. When Manning couldn't be bothered to even choose what data to leak or not he lost the ability to claim any kind of moral high ground over what happened to it. Unless he personally knew and could trust everyone with access in the WikiLeaks organization he had no way of even truly knowing what would happen if he leaked data that was dangerous to the U.S. or other people.
That's not just a theoretical tweak either; WikiLeaks has had at least two major instances of insiders in the news that don't fully agree with Assange, including the one of their higher-ups, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Additionally, whether a leak has been published is completely orthogonal to the question of whether that leak was discriminate. You're right that it's hard to tell that Snowden's leaks are discriminate until the extent of them has been published, but it's at least possible that Snowden chose each leaked briefing judiciously and precisely.