The 'music' is not an open court and a fair trial.

The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general.

We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.

Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'

The chairs [in Congress] are part of the "Gang of Eight." They get briefed on every covert-action program and everything like that. They know where all the bodies are buried. At the same time, they get far more campaign donations than anybody else from defense contractors, from intelligence corporations, from private military companies.

A given order may at any given time fail to represent those values, even work against those values. I think that's the dynamic we're seeing today.

I would say the first key concept is that, in terms of technological and communication progress in human history, the Internet is basically the equivalent of electronic telepathy. We can now communicate all the time through our little magic smartphones with people who are anywhere, all the time, constantly learning what they're thinking, talking about, exchanging messages. And this is a new capability even within the context of the Internet.