My perspective is if you're not willing to be called a few names to help out your country, you don't care enough.

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.

We have a media that goes along with the government by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional response - for example, "national security." Everyone says "national security" to the point that we now must use the term "national security." But it is not national security that they're concerned with; it is state security. And that's a key distinction.

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.

I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.

A political decision has been made not to irritate the intelligence community. The spy agencies are really embarrassed, they're really sore - the revelations really hurt their mystique. The last ten years, they were getting the Zero Dark Thirty treatment - they're the heroes. The surveillance revelations bring them back to Big Brother kind of narratives, and they don't like that at all.

Getting inequality out there into the consciousness was important. All these political pundits now talking about the 2014 and 2016 elections are talking about inequality.