''The sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light."
That assessment by President Barack Obama of news reporting National Security Agency abuses leaked by Edward Snowden reveals much about a secrecy-obsessed administration.
The "sensational way" people found out about these threats to civil liberties is called journalism. And the stories have shed light aplenty — enough that Obama's remark was part of last Friday's speech in which he was forced to announce significant changes to a system that is violently allergic to any limits.
Neither the speech nor the reforms would ever have happened if Snowden hadn't blown the whistle with reporters' help.
It comes under the heading of "inconvenient truth" that before the disclosures, Obama was presiding over a system he knew well — one he is now changing because, when the public gained the knowledge that he already had, the outcry was ferocious.
The Obama administration, while paying lip service to journalism, has never much cared for it in practice.
The repeated use of the Espionage Act to punish whistle-blowers — and use of surveillance techniques on journalists — speak much louder to that than clever D.C. dinner speeches.
Obama took some laudable steps. Public advocacy on the FISA court is overdue. The government won't just be listening to itself talk at those hearings. This is a key reform.
The requirement of a court order before access to metadata is a concept that's similarly hard to argue with.
Many questions remain. Some have unsatisfactory answers.
If the NSA does not hold telephone metadata collected in bulk, who will? Having some even less regulated entity holding private information as it continues to be gathered on a massive scale is not reassuring.
How vital is the collection of this private, sensitive data to national security? Is it worth the diminishing of civil liberties that it by definition entails?
Obama spoke for an hour on an issue usually handled in silence. Many advocates see that in itself as a vindication for Snowden and for the public activism that followed.
Much more talk is needed.
Obama has turfed responsibility for many details to Congress, which hasn't been a great climate for detail work recently — although the coalition of civil libertarians across the political spectrum there is encouraging.
Whether the change that results from Obama's initiative is real depends on continued pressure of the public. Whistle-blowers and journalists have roles to play. Vigilance and well-aimed dissent are fundamental to the well-being of the nation.
Heat, and light, and results, invariably follow.
David McCumber is Washington Bureau Chief for Hearst Newspapers. david.mccumber@hearstdc.com