Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.

It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.

If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public

We have the right of revolution. Revolution does not always have to be weapons and warfare; it's also about revolutionary ideas.

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.

If I and other whistleblowers are sentenced to long years in prison without so much as a chance to explain our motivations to a jury, it will have a deeply chilling effect on future whistleblowers working as I did to expose government abuse and overreach. It will chill speech. It will corrode the quality of our democracy.

If you begin acting contrary to the public's interest, and there is no alternative governmental model, with which you're willing to engage, we, the people, will have to put forth our own extra governmental models and methods of trying to restore the balance of liberty to the liberal tradition of Western society.