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.

I'm ultimately satisfied that we know a little bit more about how the world really works.

Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.

For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

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.

These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.

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