What I wanted to do was give society the information it needed to decide if it wanted to change the system.

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

It's interesting that you mention [Andrei] Sakharov's creative axis - he had produced something for the government that he then realized was something other than he intended. That's something [NSA whistleblower] Bill Binney and I share.

What I wanted to do was give society the information it needed to decide if it wanted to change the system.

The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.

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.

Nobody's going to vote for terrorism. So our governments don't have that sort of political pressure to act in a responsible manner when it comes to stewardship of our rights.