First, secrecy. In the initial years after September 11, the focus on thwarting another major domestic terrorist attack was understandable. Twelve years later, there have been only two major al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attacks inside the United States: the 2009 killing of 13 soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, and the April Boston marathon bombing that killed three. No evidence has emerged of terrorist groups infiltrating American executive, intelligence or defense agencies.

Yet documents released by Snowden show that the amount of surveillance information that the government collects is ballooning. The American public has no clear sense of how the metadata is used by the government, how long it is held and which agencies have access to it.

The culture of secrecy that pervades Washington borders on the absurd. American officials say they cannot discuss "classified" U.S. counter-terrorism tactics that are well-known worldwide - from water-boarding to drone strikes to data mining.

The White House refuses to release the legal memo it used it used to justify the killing of an American citizen in a drone strike in Yemen. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court will not publish summaries of the rulings that made data mining legal. And Feinstein will not declassify a redacted version of her committee's 6,000 page report on the Bush administration's use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

From drone strikes to eavesdropping to torture, the American public is not allowed to know the rules and results of U.S. counterterrorism policies.

At the same time, a sprawling secrecy industrial complex does. More than 4.9 million Americans now have government security clearances. Another 1.4 million have "top secret" clearance.

As always, politics lies beneath the surface. For a Democratic or Republican president, another major terrorist attack in the United States would be politically devastating. Erring on the side of overzealous counterterrorism and under-zealous disclosure is smart politics.

But as Obama himself argued in a speech two weeks ago, the time has come for the United States to move forward. A "perpetual war," he said, "will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways." So will perpetual fear and perpetual secrecy.

The post-2001 rise of private contractors like Snowden must end as well. Major U.S. civilian government agencies -- from the CIA to State Department -- have become dependent on contractors to operate.

Instead of increasing the size of government, the Bush administration made contractors a cornerstone of the American counterterrorism effort.

Today, the federal government pays contractors $300 billion a year, according to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. Many are believed to operate in intelligence agencies.