People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy - one of the early charges leveled against me. But it's a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail.

We can still publicly post a message to Facebook that's globally readable. But we could also adjust things so that they can only be shared with those closest to us, and the confident that this is enforced through both legal and a systemic standards-based protection.

My perspective is if you're not willing to be called a few names to help out your country, you don't care enough.

We need to put the security back in the National Security Agency. We can't have the national surveillance agency.

I have used mass surveillance to target people, so I do know how it works.

I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law.

Even if it were, you run into the same problem with international commerce: if you create a device that is famous for compromised security and it has an American back door, nobody is gonna buy it.