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.

So my first experience was that I had to do a reboot of my expectations. Like fantastic, great, he's young and charismatic and I was like wow, this is so disorienting, I have to reboot. In retrospect, I can see that it's really powerful that somebody [Snowden] so smart, so young, and with so much to lose risked so much.

Just consider the CIA and its effort to suppress the Senate's review of its torture program. Take in the fact that we live in a country that a) legalized torture and b) where no one was ever held to account for it, and now the government's internal look at what happened is being suppressed by the CIA. That's a frightening landscape to be in.

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.

In all my work, I'm interested in understanding big issues through the lives of individuals.

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

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