If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.

We have to recognise that rights are being violated. The United Nations actually filed a report that found that that was the case, that mass surveillance is a violation of rights.

The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate.

I've been recognized every now and then. It's always in computer stores. It's something like brain associations, because I'll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even in my glasses, looking exactly like my picture, nobody will recognize me. But I could be totally clean-shaven, hat on, looking nothing like myself in a computer store, and they're like, "Snowden?!"

We should never allow computers to make inherently governmental decisions in terms of the application of military force, even if that's happening on the internet.

There are even a few [people] who still honestly believe I sold information to [Vladimir] Putin - like personally, in exchange for asylum. And this is after the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, who gets to read the NSA's reporting on my activities every morning, said all of these conspiracies are delusional.

I've been watching The Wire recently.