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I know that fundamentally, changes to the fabric of the internet, and sort of our methods of communication, can enforce our rights.
So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading.
Being confronted with the realization that work you intended to benefit people is being used against them has a radicalizing effect.
Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.
[Brazil] went to the UN and said, "We need new standards for this." We need to take a look at what they're calling "data sovereignty."
All the governments just want to have more power when it comes to economic espionage, diplomatic manipulation and political influence.
When it comes to social policies, I believe women have the right to make their own choices, and inequality is a really important issue.
We have the means and we have the technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all, without any policy changes.
I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?
Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.
And that's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under.
Do we want to emulate China in the way that China emulates the West? I think, for most Americans, the answer to that question would be no.
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
When it comes to the internet, when it comes to the United States' technical economy, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.
There's a real danger in the way our representative government functions today. It functions properly only when paired with accountability.
Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.
Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.
The sad truth is that societies that demand whistleblowers be martyrs often find themselves without either, and always when it matters the most.
I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.
These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?
A given order may at any given time fail to represent those values, even work against those values. I think that's the dynamic we're seeing today.
When you are in positions of privileged access... you see things that may be disturbing. Over time, that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up.
I'm still alive, and I don't lose sleep because I have done what I feel I needed to do, it was the right thing to do and I am not going to be afraid.
We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.
If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
US spend more on research and development than the other countries, so we shouldn't be making the internet a more hostile, a more aggressive territory.
I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance.
Increasingly we're seeing these ultra-partisan sites getting larger and larger readerships because people are self-selecting themselves into communities.
The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable.
These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.
We have these traditional political parties that are less and less responsive to the needs of ordinary people, so people are in search of their own values.
I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
What does that mean for a society, for a democracy, when the people that you elect on the basis of promises can basically suborn the will of the electorate?
We are a representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through direct action. And that's enshrined in our Constitution and in our values.
There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich.
You have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it's very likely not in your country. It's somewhere else in the world.
All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it.
It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.
Presidents should not be exempted from the same standards of reason and evidence and justification that any other citizen or civil movement should be held to.
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.
Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.
Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?
We have to argue forcefully and demand that the government recognise that these programmes do not prevent - mass surveillance does not prevent acts of terrorism.
We should never allow computers to make inherently governmental decisions in terms of the application of military force, even if that's happening on the internet.
There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.