I was hoping to catch [Vladimir] Putin in a lie - like what happened to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper [in his congressional testimony]. So I asked Putin basically the same questions about Russian mass surveillance. I knew he's doing the same thing, but he denied it.

I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

It's really hard to take that step-not only do I believe in something, I believe in it enough that I'm willing to set my own life on fire and burn it to the ground.

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

I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose.

We're now more than a year since my NSA revelations, and despite numerous hours of testimony before Congress, despite tons of off-the-record quotes from anonymous officials who have an ax to grind, not a single US official, not a single representative of the United States government, has ever pointed to a single case of individualized harm caused by these revelations. This, despite the fact that former NSA director Keith Alexander said this would cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation.