You don't need to justify your rights as a citizen - that inverts the model of responsibility. The government must justify its intrusion into your rights. If you stop defending your rights by saying, "I don't need them in this context" or "I can't understand this," they are no longer rights.

I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is.

Candidates run for election on campaign promises, but once they're elected they renege on those promises, which happened with President [Barack] Obama on Guantánamo, the surveillance programs and investigating the crimes of the Bush administration. These were very serious campaign promises that were not fulfilled.

I saw things that reached a point that I could no longer conscientiously participate with them. And I simply do what I could to allow the public to make a better decision about whether or not these things should continue.

A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises.

I don't think political reform is likely to succeed. [Senators Tom] Udall and [Ron] Wyden, on the intelligence committee, have been sounding the alarm, but they are a minority.

When the United States cannibalize dollars from the defensive business of the NSA, securing our communications, protecting our systems, patching zero-day vulnerabilities, and instead we're giving those dollars to be used for creating new vulnerabilities in our systems so that they can surveil us and other people abroad who use the same systems.