How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.

The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

One of the reasons that I came forward and sort burned of my life to the ground, and I can't go back and see my family in the United States - I obviously lost my job, which I was quite comfortable with. I lost my home. It was because I felt there was no alternative.

Nobody's going to vote for terrorism. So our governments don't have that sort of political pressure to act in a responsible manner when it comes to stewardship of our rights.

I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.

I'm not a politician, and I do not think I am as effective in this way as people who actually prepare for it - is to focus on technical reform, because I speak the language of technology. I spoke with Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the World Wide Web. We agree on the necessity for this generation to create what he calls the Magna Carta for the Internet. We want to say what "digital rights" should be. What values should we be protecting, and how do we assert them.