The authoritarian one believed that an individual's rights were basically provided by governments and were determined by states. The other society - ours - tended to believe that a large portion of our rights were inherent and couldn't be abrogated by governments, even if this seemed necessary.

Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.

The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.

Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.

I would argue that security and liberty, security and privacy are not actually opposing. The only place those can be oppositional is in the realm of rhetoric but not fact.

For people who aren't familiar with my background, I didn't graduate high school. My career high salary was about $200,000. My last position was about $122,000. For a guy without a high school diploma, that's pretty good.

People do not like being lied to, and they do not like having their rights violated. So as soon as [officials] stop making arguments, you see support for me starts to rise.