I don't think that Snowden releasing documents directly made anyone's data safer, but indirectly it did. Now that people are aware that we are being spied on at a massive scale, many are more cautious about which services they choose to use, what information to put on the internet, and are more considerate of encryption. There's a few anecdotal comments in this thread saying so, and I certainly have made different choices now because of the revelations of Snowden. So maybe Snowden didn't make our data safer, but we are because of what he showed us.
Whilst the efforts of the NSA were known for some time, the Snowden leaks were very aggressive and a lot more information could be gleaned from them. It's not enough to casually mention Echelon and then dismiss these revelations as trivial. There is an enormous trove of details in the Snowden Archive that describes the apparatus and machinery used to spy, not just some vague reference to "Tapped Undersea Cables" which is an oft-used scene people use to describe the NSA. I just wish the leaks had more detail, like code samples, or even pictures of the facilities used to spy. (You'd be surprised how much can be gleaned from just one picture or a line of code).
