The new iPhone encryption does not stop them from accessing copies of your pictures or whatever that are uploaded to, for example, Apple's cloud service, which are still legally accessible because those are not encrypted. It only protects what's physically on the phone.

My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.

Someone responding to the story said 'real spies do not speak like that'. Well, I am a spy and that is how they talk. Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process - they defend decisive action. They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court. It is an authoritarian mindset in general.

I don't think I have committed a crime outside the domain of the US.

US administration does not want me to return. People forget how I ended up in Russia. They waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia, because it's the most effective attack they have against me, given the political climate in the United States.

My whole model, from the beginning, was not to personally publish a single document. I provided these documents to journalists because I didn't want my biases to decide what's in the public interest and what is not.

I have a somewhat sneaky way of effecting political change.