Love or revile him, Edward Snowden has raised a great number of profoundly important challenges for society. They include disturbing issues to do with legality, privacy, security, oversight, consent, ethics, commerce, innovation, communications, encryption, and international relations. No one sensible thinks these matters are easy to understand, let alone reconcile. But one of the things that marks democracies out from security states is the expectation that elected politicians will debate and, on our behalf, resolve the complex tangle of dilemmas involved in 21st-century surveillance, intelligence and policing.

Mr Snowden's revelations began over a year ago. For more than three months the British government has known it would want to pass fresh legislation in response to an 8 April European court of justice ruling. In the past 13 months there have been numerous debates and reports within the American Congress or at the prompting of the president himself. The same is true of many European legislatures. From the vast majority of Westminster peers and MPs there has barely been a peep. And then – nine days ago – there came the revelation that the UK government had secretly cooked up "emergency" legislation which was rushed through both houses with unseemly haste and minimal discussion.

Politicians sometimes lament that they are held in low esteem and frequently agonise how to make Westminster seem more relevant. Yet, faced with an intensely complex and important subject, the three main party leaders stitched together a deal which sidelined all meaningful democratic deliberation. Parliament was, in short, treated with contempt. What an irony that our own MPs and peers, who complain so bitterly about the draining of British sovereignty to Brussels, were not trusted to discuss this issue – while the despised European parliament has, over the past year, freely, intelligently, intricately and repeatedly addressed it.

Take just one aspect of bulk data collection raised by Mr Snowden: whether it is, in fact, properly sanctioned by vague laws drafted in an analogue age. Pre-Snowden, few people in public life discussed this matter. It apparently did not trouble the parliamentarians on the intelligence and security committee, which is supposed to act as our watchdog. Yet, in the brief time allotted this week for discussion, peers freely admitted that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 (Ripa) was hopelessly out of date. Lord Blencathra, an informed Conservative peer, called it "broken and bleeding". The former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, wrote that the act "provides no plausible regulation for the 21st century … its ignorance gives securocrats something close to a free hand". It is now supplemented by a complex piece of rushed legislation (a "puncture repair kit" – in the words of former cabinet secretary, Lord Armstrong) which peers confessed to finding baffling. Martha Lane Fox – herself an internet pioneer – admitted she struggled to understand the new bill. Helena Kennedy, a leading QC, found it "obscurantist and difficult to fathom". And these are the knowledgeable ones. Parliament was – in the crisp opinion of another former cabinet secretary, Robin Butler – "bounced". Which tells you much about the growing imbalance of power between the security state and the state.

This is the very theme to which Edward Snowden is trying to draw our attention. In print and online on Saturday, we publish the fruits of more than seven hours of interviews with the former NSA contractor, a technical expert who has worked on the inside of the biggest intelligence agencies in the western world. His message deserves to be taken very seriously indeed, regardless of any personal prejudice about the manner in which he spoke out. If politicians are going to monitor, regulate and resolve these issues they are going to have to educate themselves better. And do a better job than they did this week in showing that they can be trusted.