The big tech companies understood that the government had not only damaged American principles, it had hurt their businesses.

The question that we, as a society, have to ask is, are our collective rights worth a small relative advantage in our ability to spy on other countries and foreign citizens? I have my opinion about that, but we all collectively have to come to our opinion about it.

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end.

The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.

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

When we have some horrible terrorist attacks happen in some country we see in the recording that follows, that the intelligence community already knew about these people in advance. We know that these countries were involved in intelligence sharing premiums, that they benefited from mass surveillance, and yet they didn't stop the attacks. Yet at the same time we immediately see intelligence officials running to the newspapers and claiming that we need more surveillance, that we need more intrusion, that we need more expense of powers because it could have stopped an attack.

Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.