There are programs such as the NSA paying RSA $10 million to use an insecure encryption standard by default in their products. That's making us more vulnerable not just to the snooping of our domestic agencies, but also foreign agencies.

I was living a charmed life.

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.

We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world.

We have the means and we have the technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all, without any policy changes.

Every time somebody on the internet sort of glances at us sideways, we launch an attack at them. That's not going to work out for us long term, and the U.S. have to get ahead of the problem if we're going to succeed.

There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.