I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.

Radicalism and extremism, while they are dangers, they exist in every society on some level.

Presidents should not be exempted from the same standards of reason and evidence and justification that any other citizen or civil movement should be held to.

If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.

I would say the first key concept is that, in terms of technological and communication progress in human history, the Internet is basically the equivalent of electronic telepathy. We can now communicate all the time through our little magic smartphones with people who are anywhere, all the time, constantly learning what they're thinking, talking about, exchanging messages. And this is a new capability even within the context of the Internet.

The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general.

US administration does not want me to return. People forget how I ended up in Russia. They waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia, because it's the most effective attack they have against me, given the political climate in the United States.