When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

I wonder if it's conservative or liberal [ inalienable rights idea], because when we think of liberal thought, when we think about the relation to liberty, we're talking about traditional conservatism - as opposed to today's conservatism, which no longer represents those views.

What we're really debating is not security versus liberty, it's security versus surveillance. When we talk about electronic interception, the way that surveillance works is it preys on the weakness of protections that are being applied to all of our communications. The manner in which they're protected.

You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.

We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.

I would rather be without a state than without a voice.

Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.