We reject techniques like torture regardless of whether they're effective or ineffective because they are barbaric and harmful on a broad scale. It's the same thing with cyber warfare. We should never be attacking hospitals. We should never be taking down power plants unless that is absolutely necessary to ensure our continued existence as a free people.

We have to be able to reject disproportionate and unjustified responses in the cyber domain just as we do in the physical domain.

For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

To do that they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting you're communications to do so.

It also comes down to parenting. It is important to know what your beliefs are, and that you have to stand up for them or you don't really believe in them. You know, my father and mother - in fact, every member of my immediate family - have worked for the federal government. Sometimes misunderstood is that I didn't stand up to overthrow the system.

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing.

Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.