He is defending We the People from Our enemies, the people who are spying on us and monitoring us and video surveilling us.
(and, at the end, I will explain that President Obama got this right.)
Who are our enemies?
For starters, they are the people who revived the Writ of Assistance, the general search warrant of King George III. That's what the NSA search without limit approach is, a Writ of Assistance in which absolutely everything is searched.
Snowden is wise to hide.
He is running from a government that believes in indefinite detention without trial. This includes people in Guantanamo known to be innocent. In contrast, as Solzhenitsyn reminds us, prisoners in the Soviet Gulag all were given formal sentences of fixed duration.
He is running from a government that believes in torture, including waterboarding and forced feeding.
He is running from a government that has already assassinated its own citizens without even a Stalinist show trial.
He is running from a government that views massive violent entry as a police technique, as opposed to the SS polite knock at the door, as described by my former NSF program officer, who I gather witnessed one from inside.
Yes, Snowden is wise to run.*
Yes, President Obama got this right. When, We the People, the owner-creators of Our Constitution, find that we cannot trust the Executive, the Congress, or the Judiciary, there may be some problems.
Like Watergate, but far more serious.
*and if you object that I am comparing us with truly evil people, perhaps we should fix the factual comparisons, which speak for themselves.