The government doesn't fuck around with unauthorized broad stroke "self declassification". "Leak" is a bullshit term. When you are divulging classified material, you are preempting the process for declassification, which while obtuse and slow moving, errs on the side of not accidentally releasing damaging material. Note that there have been some instances, and I mean very few, in which material is classified incorrectly due to nefarious purposes, ie. hiding stuff of no national importance to avoid personal scorn, but those instances are very few, and there is even a mechanism in place to review those instances.
I understand that the majority opinion for this is based on a "I'm not part of the club, so fuck the club" type of mentality. Secrets are being kept from you. This is happening. The reason is not because YOU are having secrets kept from, perhaps you are totally trustworthy and invested in national interest, but we have to KNOW you to see that, and that involves an investigation. Because it IS such a big deal, we only trust some people with this information. And even those ones, we only trust the ones with a NEED to know with certain information.
If the world was perfect, every citizen would know it all, but understand the power of the information at hand, and would not divulge it. But there are spies, not James Bond shit, just normal workers who earn an extra paycheck spending 15 mins a week telling someone unscrupulous some info they don't consider damaging. When your troop is deploying, what training is going on, what inspection is coming up, what problems you're having with IT... These seem like not important, but when they condense 1500 people's 15 mins, they can stack info together and construct sensitive information. So we only trust verified people, and when they "leak" to get a paycheck or adoration, or even if it's just because THEY decided they know better than the government at large, they have consequences. Because they should.
You don't know the whole of the story. Not in the least. Snowden released what he could get his hands on, but not other documentation that may clarify the programs, or limit them, or justify them. He just released thinking he knew better. That gets your ass thrown in jail, because you are divulging, not to the public, but to adversaries which are IN the public, a major piece of info, which they can use with other info they've gathered to make large discoveries.
There is a process for ethical questions in classified material. And when you bring it up, you are NOT given the full picture so you can make up your own mind. Someone who does this for a living is read in to the entirety of the program you have an issue with, and they make a determination. They take their jobs very seriously, and do very good work, but you are NOT going to get the feel-good of learning it all, you will get an "Something is fishy here, we're looking into it" or "Everything is ethically sound, move along". You can disagree, there's an appeals process, but YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN THE ENTIRETY OF THE INFORMATION TO MAKE THE DETERMINATION YOURSELF, because your job is not to be that person. So when you go "Fuck this, it's not right" and skip or bypass the process, which you agreed to by signing a form saying you know the limitations you will have, and the processes you will have to follow, you go to jail. And you should.