I think it's reasonable that the government, when it has a warrant from a court, when it's exposed to scrutiny by a legal process that would be upheld, not just nationally, but internationally as a reliable and robust standard rights protection, they can enjoy certain powers. This is no different from having the police able to get a warrant to go and search your house, to kick at your door because they think you're an arms dealer or something like that. There needs to be a process involved, it needs to be public, and it needs to be challengeable in court at all times.

From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform: there's the political and the technical. I don't believe the political will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in their lives.

The people at the NSA aren't trying to ruin your life. They're not trying to put you in authoritarian dystopia. These are normal people trying to do good work in hard circumstances.

If we simply follow the rules that a state imposes upon us when that state is acting contrary to the public interest, we're not actually improving anything. We're not changing anything.

There is a policy response that needs to occur. There is also a technical response that needs to occur. It is the development community that can really craft the solutions and make sure we are safe.

Before 2013, if you said the NSA was making records of everybody's phone calls and the [Government Communications Headquarters] was monitoring lawyers and journalists, people raised eyebrows and called you a conspiracy theorist. Those days are over.

So many of the things we're told by the government simply aren't true.