Perhaps off-topic with regards to the contents of this article, but as someone who wants to see information like this disseminated to a large audience, I think that decisions like this that may hurt that effort are relevant.

In building an audience on the web, we claw after increased traffic by playing with anything that could change user behavior. Domain names have an effect.

Maybe I'm wrong, and the specific issue I'm raising doesn't have any bearing on anything at all. But if I'm right, I think it matters. Most of the Snowden leaks are now being disseminated through The Intercept; if you care about this story you should care about the medium through which it is delivered. If you want to see these stories lead to change, you should want as many people to read them as possible.