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

The most striking thing Snowden has revealed is the depth of what the NSA and the Five Eyes countries [Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the US] are doing, their hunger for all data, for total bulk dragnet surveillance where they try to collect all communications and do it all sorts of different ways. Their ethos is "collect it all."

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.

In all my work, I'm interested in trying to understand the human consequences of government policies.

In terms of sources coming forward, I really reject this idea of talking about one, two, three sources. There are many sources that have informed the reporting we've done and I think that Americans owe them a debt of gratitude for taking the risk they do.

It's not everyday that a whistleblower is actually willing to be identified.

I think it's radical to censor information because the government asks you to. That's radical.