A conscientious objector to the drone program who isn't much bothered by Section 215 metadata collection might decide that the NSA's role in targeted killing makes it complicit in immoral behavior, and that it ought to be subject to more scrutiny. "Spying is one thing, but helping to kill is another," he or she might write in a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein. "Investigate whether NSA information led any innocents to die, and if that happened, initiate appropriate reforms." The article made me, an opponent of both America's targeted-killing program and domestic surveillance, wonder whether signature strikes–the ones where we don't know the identities of people we're killing—are ever triggered by the NSA's "hop analysis." If so, I have new, powerful objections to the policy as it currently operates.

Notice what's implicit in the scenarios I'm laying out: that there is inherent value in citizens being given access to information when it informs their judgments about public policy. Information of this sort is a prerequisite for meaningful civic participation. There ought to be a strong presumption in favor of making it public, especially when the policy at issue is as significant and controversial as targeted killing.

To see why, imagine that Fred Kaplan got his way, that the American public was kept ignorant of the NSA's role in a contested program with life-and-death stakes for many involved. Without presuming how public opinion would ultimately be affected, both NSA defenders and critics would be deprived of arguments for their positions; citizens would be less able to judge the importance and effectiveness of the NSA; and Americans debating how much oversight the NSA ought to be subject to wouldn't grok how faulty analysis could lead to deaths of innocents.

(Has that ever happened? We have no idea, and that's worrisome.)

The NSA leaks are partly about exposing surveillance of Americans. But as Edward Snowden himself has said repeatedly, they are also about informing Americans about secret policies our government is pursuing, so that the people can decide whether they are moral, effective, and desirable, or whether they ought to be reformed, as well as whether our representatives are acting as we'd want.

The unstated assumption behind a lot of national-security-state defenders and Snowden critics is that the public has no proper role in deciding any of these questions, because the information needed to make sound judgments is properly classified. For the most part, they are unwilling to acknowledge the degree to which the classification regime they defend is incompatible with government by the people. Even classification regimes enacted by duly elected representatives of the people create a thorny problem. They may be legitimate immediately after passage, but how can the people know if what's being kept from them still accords with their notions of how they want to be governed if they don't know what it is? One generation shouldn't be able to consign a nation to ignorance forever after.