One journalist said that everybody in Russia is miserable. Russia is a terrible place. And I'm going to end up miserable and I'm going to be a drunk and I'm never going to do anything. I don't drink. I've never been drunk in my life. And they talk about Russia like it's the worst place on earth. Russia's great.

The most important thing to the United States is not being able to attack our adversaries, the most important thing is to be able to defend ourselves. And we can't do that as long as we're subverting our own security standards for the sake of surveillance.

We reject techniques like torture regardless of whether they're effective or ineffective because they are barbaric and harmful on a broad scale. It's the same thing with cyber warfare. We should never be attacking hospitals. We should never be taking down power plants unless that is absolutely necessary to ensure our continued existence as a free people.

The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.

The rule of law doesn't mean the police are in charge, but that we all answer to the same laws.

I don't want the stage. I'm terrified of giving these talking heads some distraction, some excuse to jeopardize, smear, and delegitimize a very important movement.

[Bill] Binney designed ThinThread, an NSA program that used encryption to try to make mass surveillance less objectionable. It would still have been unlawful and unconstitutional.