What Snowden sees, what Obama sees

Edward Snowden,the whistleblower on the NSA's surveillance programs, is brave, serious-minded, and capable, and was very selective in what he exposed, determined not to endanger individuals. I am glad he revealed what he did, to paraphrase James Fallows, though I'm not yet sure what I think the government ought to refrain from doing in its efforts to thwart terrorist plots. I just want to take a second to try to hold two ideas in the mind at once.

The first is this, from Snowden, in an exchange with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman (Gellman's debriefing is a  remarkable read, as is a Q&A between Snowden and his contacts at the Guardian). Asked, "Did he impute evil motives to his former colleagues, or the White House?", Snowden responded:

“Analysts (and government in general) aren’t bad guys, and they don’t want to think of themselves as such,” he replied. But he said they labored under a false premise that “if a surveillance program produces information of value, it legitimizes it."