We can, should, do, and must continue to have a strong and overriding sense of personal morality when dealing with government-- "just following orders" is not, has not, should not, and will never be an acceptable response to government wrongdoing as committed by the people who make up the organs of the government.

Without Snowden, Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Manning, and the other leakers, we would still be completely and utterly in the dark about most of the malicious things our government is doing. It is solely by these people's sense of moral agency that the wrongdoings came to light! If we left it up to the government to regulate itself within the rules, we would absolutely never have any kind of citizens oversight specifically because they make their own set of rules, and those rules include keeping us in the dark for the purposes of making things run smoother.

As far as claiming there was some kind of debate over the dragnet-- no, some representatives quibbling about the wording from time to time does not count as citizen oversight. The representatives didn't even know how deep the NSA rabbit hole went. They didn't even understand the interpretations of the Patriot act that were being used to justify the spying. They were almost as clueless as we were. So no, there was no debate, no oversight, no way for the citizenry to say "stop" before the fact, and so far, no listening to their cries after the fact.

You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.

It was a moral necessity to leak, it isn't germane to talk about legality in the context of morality. We either have leakers, or we're passengers to the system, which doesn't sound like a democracy to me.