Where are we going to reject that easy but flawed process of letting the intelligence services do whatever they want? It's inevitable that it will happen. I think it's going to be where Internet businesses go.

We are all today being monitored in advance and in criminal suspicion. And I think that's terrifying, and deeply illiberal as concept. And that's something that we should reject.

People say that [i'm a celebrity], but I've only had to sign autographs for "civ-libs" types. And I autograph court orders.

Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech.

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

You have ceded the concept of your own rights. You've converted them into something you get as a revocable privilege from the government, something that can be abrogated at its convenience. And that has diminished the measure of liberty within a society.