My whole model, from the beginning, was not to personally publish a single document. I provided these documents to journalists because I didn't want my biases to decide what's in the public interest and what is not.

The reality is if we sit back and allow a few officials behind closed doors to launch offensive attacks without any oversight against foreign nations, against people we don't like, against political groups, radicals, and extremists whose ideas we may not agree with, and could be repulsive or even violent - if we let that happen without public buy-in, we won't have any seat at the table of government to decide whether or not it's appropriate for these officials to drag us into some kind of war activity that we don't want, but we weren't aware of at the time.

As inequality grows, the basic bonds of social fraternity are fraying - as we discussed in regard to Occupy Wall Street. As tensions increase, people will become more willing to engage in protest. But that moment is not now.

[Bill] Binney will argue with you all day about ThinThread, but his idea was that it would collect everything about everybody but be immediately encrypted so no one could read it. Only a court could give intelligence officials the key to decrypt it. The idea was to find a kind of a compromise between [privacy rights and] the assertion that if you don't collect things as they happen, you won't have them later - because what the NSA really wants is the capability of retrospective investigation.

It's really hard to take that step-not only do I believe in something, I believe in it enough that I'm willing to set my own life on fire and burn it to the ground.

The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night.

I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.