Let's focus there.

"If sparking a debate is enough to earn the Pulitzer’s coveted public service medal, then sure. Congrats," Wittes writes. "I would note, however, that merely sparking a debate is an exceedingly low standard." He proceeds to recall past award-winners in the Pulitzer's public-service category, winners that he much preferred:

They passed a test much higher than the “sparked a debate” test, a test that the Westboro Baptist Church and the Church of Scientology, I might add, pass with some regularity, and they were not merely transit stops for leaks from others.

The Westboro Baptist Church is an anti-gay congregation that protests at military funerals to attract media attention. If it did not exist, Americans would be no less aware of the ongoing, transparent debate about public policy affecting gays. Wittes reveals a blind spot when he conflates the value of the debate Westboro sparks with the value of the debate sparked by Snowden and various reporters. The latter is a tremendous public service: When public policy is shrouded in secrecy, sparking debate is synonymous with enabling the practice of democracy. Without debate, representative government as we know it is extinguished.

Snowden and the Pulitzer Prize committee understand this. Unlike Wittes, they appreciate that informing citizens about public policy has inherent value and is a prerequisite for meaningful civic participation. That's especially true when what's being hidden includes repeated violations of the Constitution, national-security figures lying to Congress, woefully underinformed legislators, and mass surveillance.

The benefits of reporting on the NSA aren't just theoretical.

As a direct result of articles written by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and others, President Obama and multiple members of Congress have changed their positions on surveillance policy. Expert executive-branch panels have criticized the status quo. The White House and legislators have suggested multiple reforms. Article III judges have concluded the NSA's behavior is needless and illegal. That these significant actions occurred only after the Snowden leaks is evidence that prior secrecy retarded the whole civic process.

Back then, public policy lacked democratic legitimacy. Recent reform efforts are due to the fact that, when Americans learned about the status quo, they wouldn't tolerate it.

Treating the spark for a debate that informs policy as no more a public service than anti-gay protests at military funerals isn't just myopic. It's consistent with the anti-democratic, anti-transparency ideology that prevails at Lawfare. Wittes and others believe that the public has no proper role in judging the propriety of most NSA actions, because the information needed to render judgments is properly classified. And they're not troubled by the ways in which the NSA and the FISA court have twisted the law so that it hardly resembles what Congress passed.