And that's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under.

The chairs [in Congress] are part of the "Gang of Eight." They get briefed on every covert-action program and everything like that. They know where all the bodies are buried. At the same time, they get far more campaign donations than anybody else from defense contractors, from intelligence corporations, from private military companies.

You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.

There's a real danger in the way our representative government functions today. It functions properly only when paired with accountability.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government ... I only work with journalists.

As for labeling someone a whistleblower, I think it does them - it does all of us - a disservice, because it "otherizes" us.

While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.