The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian?

People say that [i'm a celebrity], but I've only had to sign autographs for "civ-libs" types. And I autograph court orders.

Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?

When people talk about Web 2.0, they mean that when the Internet, the World Wide Web, first became popular, it was one way only.

It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.

What the NSA really wants is the capability of retrospective investigation. They want to have a perfect record of the last five years of your life, so when you come to their attention, they can know everything about you. I'm not down with that, but [Bill] Binney was trying to create something like that.