Until we reform our laws and until we fix the excesses of these old policies that we inherited in the post-9/11 era, we're not going to be able to put the security back in the NSA.

We're now more than a year since my NSA revelations, and despite numerous hours of testimony before Congress, despite tons of off-the-record quotes from anonymous officials who have an ax to grind, not a single US official, not a single representative of the United States government, has ever pointed to a single case of individualized harm caused by these revelations. This, despite the fact that former NSA director Keith Alexander said this would cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation.

So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading.

Since the revelations, we have seen a massive sea change in the technological basis and makeup of the Internet.

Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.

We don't like to use the phrase "state security" in the United States because it reminds us of all the bad regimes. But it's a key concept, because when these officials are out on TV, they're not talking about what's good for you. They're not talking about what's good for business. They're not talking about what's good for society. They're talking about the protection and perpetuation of a national state system.

The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.