When you think about the abolition of slavery for example, for the ruling class with the rich white people owning plantations and states, and things like that, slavery was to their benefit. To oppose it didn't make any sense at all on a rational basis. But on a rights basis, on a principle basis, it made obvious, overwhelming sense.

US spend more on research and development than the other countries, so we shouldn't be making the internet a more hostile, a more aggressive territory.

I saw things that reached a point that I could no longer conscientiously participate with them. And I simply do what I could to allow the public to make a better decision about whether or not these things should continue.

When I talk about the polling, I'm talking about the principles. It shows these officials are knowingly attempting to shift public opinion, even though they know what they say is not factual.

We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.

I must say I'm surprised by how skeptical of the [Barack] Obama administration The Nation has been.

I've been recognized every now and then. It's always in computer stores. It's something like brain associations, because I'll be in the grocery store and nobody will recognize me. Even in my glasses, looking exactly like my picture, nobody will recognize me. But I could be totally clean-shaven, hat on, looking nothing like myself in a computer store, and they're like, "Snowden?!"