Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.

All those people who went out [to Occupy Wall Street] missed work, didn't get paid. Those were individuals who were already feeling the effects of inequality, so they didn't have a lot to lose. And then the individuals who were louder, more disruptive and, in many ways, more effective at drawing attention to their concerns were immediately castigated by authorities. They were cordoned off, pepper-sprayed, thrown in jail.

You have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it's very likely not in your country. It's somewhere else in the world.

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

One of the reasons that I came forward and sort burned of my life to the ground, and I can't go back and see my family in the United States - I obviously lost my job, which I was quite comfortable with. I lost my home. It was because I felt there was no alternative.

Custom developed digital weapons, cyber weapons nowadays typically chain together a number of zero-day exploits that are targeted against the specific site, the specific target that they want to hit. But it depends, this level of sophistication, on the budget and the quality of the actor who's instigating the attack. If it's a country that's less poor or less sophisticated, it'll be a less sophisticated attack.

In America, we collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.