When Clapper raised his hand and lied to the American public, was anyone tried? Were any charges brought? Within 24 hours of going public, I had three charges against me.

Candidates run for election on campaign promises, but once they're elected they renege on those promises, which happened with President [Barack] Obama on Guantánamo, the surveillance programs and investigating the crimes of the Bush administration. These were very serious campaign promises that were not fulfilled.

These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.

It's important to remember when you start doing things like attacking hospitals through the internet, when you start attacking things like internet exchange points, when something goes wrong, people can die. If a hospital's infrastructure is affected, lifesaving equipment turns off.

I talk to cryptographers, some of the leading technologists in the world, all the time about how we can deal with these issues. It is not possible to create a back door that is only accessible, for example, to the FBI.

When governments go too far to punish people for actions that are dissent rather than a real threat to the nation, they risk delegitimizing not just their systems of justice, but the legitimacy of the government itself. Because when they bring political charges against people for acts that were clearly at least intended to work in the public interest, they deny them the opportunity to mount a public-interest defense.

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.