I don't speak Arabic - I know a little to get by, but that's all.

Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head. It must have been like that with you and Snowden. But what if he'd been a graying guy with the same documents and far less intelligent things to say about them? In other words, how exactly did who he was make your movie and remake our world?

The free software community should be supported more widely. I’m totally in solidarity with what they do.

We've already seen shifts happening in some of the big companies - Google, Apple - that now understand how vulnerable their customer data is, and that if it's vulnerable, then their business is, too, and so you see a beefing up of encryption technologies. At the same time, no programs have been dismantled at the governmental level, despite international pressure.

One of the most frightening things, I think, is the capacity for retroactive searching, so you can go back in time and trace who someone is in contact with and where they've been.

We don't stand here alone, it's possible through the great organisations that support us. The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed aren't only a threat to privacy but to democracy, when the most important decisions made affect all of us. Thank you to Edward Snowden. I share this with Glenn Greenwald and other journalists who are exposing truth.

One of the things that I think is true is that encryption actually is able to secure our communications, that every individual can use encryption, and that it's accessible and in many cases free.