Your rights matter, because you never know when you're going to need them.

One of the saddest and most damaging legacies of the [George W.] Bush administration is the increased assertion of the "state secrets" privilege, which kept organizations like the ACLU - which had cases of people who had actually been tortured and held in indefinite detention - from getting their day in court.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.

The power of the presidency is important, but it is not determinative.

If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public

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.