A different [Ronald] Reagan-era authority: EO 12333, an executive order for foreign-intelligence collection, as opposed to the ones we now use domestically. So this one isn't even authorized by law. It's just an old-ass piece of paper with Reagan's signature on it, which has been updated a couple times since then. So what happened was that all of a sudden these massive, behemoth companies realized their data centers - sending hundreds of millions of people's communications back and forth every day - were completely unprotected, electronically naked.

[Brazil] went to the UN and said, "We need new standards for this." We need to take a look at what they're calling "data sovereignty."

It's becoming less and less the National Security Agency and more and more the national surveillance agency. It's gaining more offensive powers with each passing year.

Increasingly we're seeing these ultra-partisan sites getting larger and larger readerships because people are self-selecting themselves into communities.

You have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it's very likely not in your country. It's somewhere else in the world.

I describe it as tribalism because they're very tightly woven communities. Lack of civility is part of it, because that's how Internet tribes behave. We see this more and more in electoral politics, which have become increasingly poisonous.

As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I'm some kind of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative.