“They’ll get into intentions, capabilities, what you need to know to better protect yourselves and also vulnerabilities on our end that can be exploited,” said Frank Cilluffo, a former top Department of Homeland Security official who now directs The George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. “So obviously, this has potential life-death kinds of significance as well — especially if you have names of individuals. That’s not trivial.”…

“They’d be interested in anything they could learn about the very thing he’s surfaced, that is the NSA program, the extent of the NSA program’s coverage, the extent, to which he can say, that affects Russia,” Earnest said. “Before he left Hong Kong, he made some statements about the program covering China and Hong Kong, and a Chinese company. So presumably he’s aware of similar information about the programs and their coverage of Russia, and I think that would probably be at the top of the list.”…

“System administrators have always been prime potential targets, given that they’re somewhat like the modern-day equivalent of a librarian, or a gatekeeper,” Cilluffo said. “They may not have the context, but they have access to a ton of information — some cases even the mother lode of information.”