Copying from another comment, to prove how stupid is to expect that a secret service will pet you on the head for talking out against them:
"Thomas Drake did everything you say is the right, he paid the price:
| The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the
| very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did.
| Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than
| Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising
| his concerns through official channels. And he got
| crushed.
| Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI
| agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged
| with crimes that could have sent him to prison for
| the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially
| and professionally. The only job he could find
| afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban
| Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to
| injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s
| surveillance programme were largely ignored.
I'll have to read more but it seems that he didn't use proper channels he went to a reporter (with only unclass material, he claims). They raided him probably expecting classified material to be involved. Thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard of this instance.
