All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

We decentralise the ability to decide the level of publicity that's attached to any of our communications.

America should be cooling down the tensions in the internet, making it a more trusted environment, making it a more secure environment, making it a more reliable environment, because that's the foundation of our economy and our future.

How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?

The United States need to put internet processes, policies, and procedures in place with real laws that forbid going beyond the borders of what's reasonable to ensure that the only time that we and other countries around the world exercise these authorities are when it is absolutely necessary.

In the end, the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

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