It's fascinating to see how things have changed. Basically, every time the US government gets off the soapbox of the Sunday-morning talk shows, the average American's support for the surveillance revelations grows.

They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we as the public trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

[Occupy Wall Street] had an impact on consciousness. It was not effective in realizing change.

Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'

What we need to do is we need to create new international standards of behavior - not just national laws, because this is a global problem. We can't just fix it in the United States, because there are other countries that don't follow U.S. laws. We have to create international standards that say that cyber attacks should only ever occur when it is absolutely necessary.

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.