When Daniel Ellsberg was 42, a judge threw out Espionage Act charges against him. At 90, he sought such charges again in hope of challenging their constitutionality.
Compared with revelations in 2013 of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, intelligence reports in a trove of recently leaked documents have resulted in limited outrage abroad.
The freshness of the documents — some appear to be barely 40 days old — and the hints they hold for operations to come make them particularly damaging, officials say.
Mr. Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, left the United States after giving hundreds of highly classified N.S.A. documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post in 2013.