The issue is we're losing leverage. Governments are increasingly getting more power and we are increasingly losing our ability to control that power, and even to be aware of that power.

The problem is when [the state] monitor all of us, en masse, all of the time, without any specific justification for intercepting in the first place, without any specific judicial showing that there's a probable cause for that infringement of our rights.

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform: there's the political and the technical. I don't believe the political will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in their lives.

I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is.

Being confronted with the realization that work you intended to benefit people is being used against them has a radicalizing effect.

I hate these questions - I don't like talking about this stuff [popular culture], because it's so... to me, it's so ordinary.