What we're really debating is not security versus liberty, it's security versus surveillance. When we talk about electronic interception, the way that surveillance works is it preys on the weakness of protections that are being applied to all of our communications. The manner in which they're protected.

The people at the NSA aren't trying to ruin your life. They're not trying to put you in authoritarian dystopia. These are normal people trying to do good work in hard circumstances.

I don't want to directly confront great powers, which we cannot defeat on their terms. They have more money, more clout, more airtime. We cannot be effective without a mass movement, and the American people today are too comfortable to adapt to a mass movement.

When it is made to appear as though not knowing everything about everyone is an existential crisis, then you feel that bending the rules is okay. Once people hate you for bending those rules, breaking them becomes a matter of survival.

There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

Terrorism kills far fewer people than cigarettes, or alcohol, or car accidents. But we don't see ourselves restructuring society and lives in order to make those threats go away.

I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.