I'm not an anarchist. I'm not saying, "Burn it to the ground."

You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.

The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian?

If I am traitor, who did I betray? I gave all my information to the American public, to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason, I think people really need to consider who they think they're working for. The public is supposed to be their boss, not their enemy.

When we talk about computer network exploitation, computer network attack, we're not just talking about your home PC. We're talking about your cell phone, and we're also talking about internet routers themselves. The NSA is attacking the critical infrastructure of the internet to try to take ownership of it. They hack the routers that connect nations to the internet itself.

Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?

If we can't have an open and honest debate about the value of ideas in a university in Glasgow, or Boston, or anywhere else in the world, then where are they going to go?