The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald presents NSA fugitive Edward Snowden's leaks as undeniable evidence of immoral and illegal spying by the U.S. government, and he is liable to attack anyone who says otherwise.

One such disagreement led freelance defense reporter Joshua Foust to shut off the comments on his personal website.

Foust, a former intelligence analyst, had asserted that Snowden's leaks, while valuable in exposing encroachment on civil liberty, also jeopardized legitimate security concerns. Quickly, he found his site bombed with negative comments from Greenwald supporters. Greenwald himself got in on the mix, implying over Twitter that Foust was secretly working for the government.

Despite the backlash, Foust has continued to offer a nuanced analysis of the NSA leaks — and no, he doesn't work for the government.

He holds a nuanced view of Greenwald, too: "Fundamentally, we agree on a lot of things," he tells Business Insider.

Indeed, Foust immediately recognized the significance of Greenwald's initial report about the NSA scooping reams of domestic telephony metadata via Verizon, a practice that legally circumvents the 4th Amendment through the business records provision.

"The Verizon metadata story is one, that one has caused me the most concern, for both the government’s conduct, and our own understanding of how much we’re being watched," Foust says. "Clearly [the NSA is] engaging in massive surveillance of American citizens. Saying they're not engaging in surveillance of Americans is a lie."