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.

Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.

I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.

There are cyber threats out there, this is a dangerous world, and we have to be safe, we have to be secure no matter the cost.

For people who aren't familiar with my background, I didn't graduate high school. My career high salary was about $200,000. My last position was about $122,000. For a guy without a high school diploma, that's pretty good.

People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy - one of the early charges leveled against me. But it's a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail.

Increasingly we're seeing these ultra-partisan sites getting larger and larger readerships because people are self-selecting themselves into communities.