Custom developed digital weapons, cyber weapons nowadays typically chain together a number of zero-day exploits that are targeted against the specific site, the specific target that they want to hit. But it depends, this level of sophistication, on the budget and the quality of the actor who's instigating the attack. If it's a country that's less poor or less sophisticated, it'll be a less sophisticated attack.

Every time somebody on the internet sort of glances at us sideways, we launch an attack at them. That's not going to work out for us long term, and the U.S. have to get ahead of the problem if we're going to succeed.

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

Acting Government officials, they said they wanted - they would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to poison me as I was returning from the grocery store, and have me die in the shower.

In the United States and some of the other countries involved it's sort of a "five eyes" global spying alliance. That's the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. They've had a little bit of a more muscular public response. Now, they haven't been satisfying or really meaningful in any country yet. But they have been engaging.

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.

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?