Re: Snowden isn't an academic by any means.
"first see if they are protecting citizens and second.. did they follow the law."
Well, as to the first, they were absolutely protecting the citizens of Australia from knowing that that nice Mr Turnbull's 'not only better, but cheaper to boot' was plagued with massive cost overruns, unexplained shortages, corruption and inefficiencies, which would only have worried us or, worse, make us question the assertion that this government has a fucking clue about what they're doing.
For the second, well not really. They were responding to a politically motivated request from an extremely interested party (whether the Liberals or NBN, doesn't really matter) to find out the identity of the person who had the temerity to reveal to the Australian public what this bunch of weasels were doing IN OUR NAME, and using our bloody money. They also allowed an employee of NBN (not a police officer, an employee of a private company with no legal
right to be involved in the investigation or supported by the AFP) to photograph documents on the desk of an MP and then to take those pictures away with him/her.
All in all, Mr Snowden was pretty spot on with his analysis on this one, I think.