The problem is when [the state] monitor all of us, en masse, all of the time, without any specific justification for intercepting in the first place, without any specific judicial showing that there's a probable cause for that infringement of our rights.

Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

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

I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance.

Radicals are not going to disappear. They're going to go underground. They're going to be hardened. And they're not going to be exposed to contrary ideas made by educated people who can make real, convincing, and persuasive arguments to deradicalise these people.

[Barton ] Gellman printed a great anecdote: he showed two Google engineers a slide that showed how the NSA was doing this, and the engineers "exploded in profanity."