Holding...

To answer your first concern...

Yes, tons of oversight by officials (elected and appointed) who had no obligation to hear concerns of those involved in the data collection process about the legality of the process, and who never would have allowed those concerns to go public.  That is not "oversight" in my eyes... that is simply more people in on the secret.

As I have stated in the past, I am becoming more and more concerned that the Patriot Act is the worst piece of legislation ever to have altered the face of our government.  It literally makes New Deal look like child's play when seen as a government-growing effort.  Furthermore, I question where in the Constitution it says people like Obama, Bush, Cheney, Feinstein and Biden get to "interpret" the scope of their authority.  It is clearly defined, and limited, and it isn't up to them to define its limits.

To answer your second...

No, I'm not justifying the means of his releasing the info.  I'm saying there was no other alternative means by which he could have gotten his concerns into the public forum, which mitigates the offense because those that set up the rules did so in a manner that kept us (the People) entirely out of the loop.

You broke Snowden's leaks into three categories.  One you were okay with, one you were ambivalent towards, and one was treason in your eyes.  I feel all three are symptoms of the same disease... as, I'm sure, do you.  We simply feel those symptoms differently as individuals.

If you want to discuss the specific nature of the material concerning foreign intelligence, we can discuss that.  As I said, his release was done in the manner that it was because he had no legitimate recourse to take internally.  It had been tried no fewer than three times, and all three whistle-blowers were fired, harassed and even imprisoned for following "proper channels" to get their concerns reviewed by higher authority.

In fact, I want to discuss it more...

I have stated that I agree with Obama's determination that the War on Terror is unachievable, unsustainable and completely unwinable (is that a word?  am I simply spelling it wrong?).  That being said, I (as a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen of these United States) have a problem with my tax dollars being spent on the government efforts to spy on signatory allies and their elected leaders.  I have a problem with the means by which we conduct intelligence gathering operations across the globe being utterly without any sort of rational public oversight or accountability.  And if it takes a man like Snowden to shake the monkeys out of the trees by breaking some rules... well, we have a long and respected tradition in this country of good people doing just that.  Seeing rules and laws that are unjust, unethical or illegal and ignoring them or fighting them outright.  That is what Dr. King did.  That is what Rosa Parks did.  That is what Harriet Tubmen did.  That's what the Sons of Liberty did.  That is what Henry Thoreau did.

The crime here is that we, the People, are responsible for the actions of our government because we, the People, put that government there.  We cannot do that responsibly when we do not know what that government is doing in our name.  The crime is that we have elected a President that ran on the promise of transparency in government... and it takes a young man's breaking of law to show us what is really happening.  And if our ability to collect info or data in places like Afghanistan or South Africa suffer as a result of that, then perhaps we need to re-examine why we are there at all.  Tough for us to try to police the world when we can't even keep our own affairs in order, isn't it?