I built my own studio. I don't have the professional language to describe it because I'm not a videographer - but I'm a technician. So I get the camera, I get all the things that translate the camera to the computer, I set up a live session, I do the security on it, I set up a background so I can key it out, like newscasters do, and replace it with whatever I want - and I can be anywhere I need to be.

Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.

All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.

I've been recognized every now and then. It's always in computer stores. It's something like brain associations, because I'll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even in my glasses, looking exactly like my picture, nobody will recognize me. But I could be totally clean-shaven, hat on, looking nothing like myself in a computer store, and they're like, "Snowden?!"

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 saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest.