While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

The [George W.] Bush administration marked a very serious and profoundly negative turning point - not just for the nation, but for the international order, because we started to govern on the idea of "might makes right." And that's a very old, toxic and infectious idea.

When people conceptualize a cyber-attack, they do tend to think about parts of the critical infrastructure like power plants, water supplies, and similar sort of heavy infrastructure, critical infrastructure areas. And they could be hit, as long as they're network connected, as long as they have some kind of systems that interact with them that could be manipulated from internet connection.

When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

Going all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, it is clear that the government is not concerned with damage to national security, because in none of these cases was there damage.