A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.

People in both parties from the congressional intelligence committees - all these co-opted officials who play cheerleader for spy agencies - go on these Sunday shows and they say: "Snowden was a traitor. He works against Americans. He works for the Chinese. Oh, wait, he left Hong Kong - he works for the Russians."

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries.

[I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.

In liberal societies we don't typically require citizens to rearrange their activities, their lives, the way they go about their business, to make it easy for the police to do their work.

I'm saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest.