I think that's actually what's missing from government, for the most part. We've got a lot of policy people, but we have no technologists, even though technology is such a big part of our lives. It's just amazing, because even these big Silicon Valley companies, the masters of the universe or whatever, haven't engaged with Washington until recently. They're still playing catch-up.

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading.

I think we're going to see a move away from that, because young people - digital natives who spend their life on the Internet - get saturated. It's like a fashion trend, and becomes a sign of a lack of sophistication.

It's fascinating to see how things have changed. Basically, every time the US government gets off the soapbox of the Sunday-morning talk shows, the average American's support for the surveillance revelations grows.

US has to be able to rely on a safe and interconnected internet in order to compete with other countries.

When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.