The question that we, as a society, have to ask is, are our collective rights worth a small relative advantage in our ability to spy on other countries and foreign citizens? I have my opinion about that, but we all collectively have to come to our opinion about it.

The surveillance revelations are critically important because they revealed that our rights are being redefined in secret, by secret courts that were never intended to have that role - without the consent of the public, without even the awareness of the majority of our political representatives.

When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights.

Look at the reactions of liberal governments to the surveillance revelations during the last years. In the United States, we've got this big debate, but we've got official paralysis - because they're the ones who had their hand caught most deeply in the cookie jar.

The New York Times and The Guardian came out and said, "Hey, clemency for Snowden." But for me, the key - and I've said this from the beginning: it's not about me. I don't care if I get clemency. I don't care what happens to me.

We need the security standards to apply to the internet. We need to be able to trust that when we send our emails through Verizon, that Verizon isn't sharing with the NSA, that Verizon isn't sharing them with the FBI or German intelligence or French intelligence or Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence.

It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.