The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call. And then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis to sort to derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.

In the United States, there hasn't been much legislative change on the surveillance issue, although there are some tepid proposals.

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

It's much easier, I think, to protect communications while they're in transit at least, than it is to enforce legislation in every country in the world to say that you can't do this.

We need to think about encryption not as this sort of arcane, black art. It's a basic protection.

What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one's country.