GLENN GREENWALD:

That was, for me, the towering question from the beginning, which is, why would a 29-year-old with a very stable career in a lucrative job and a girlfriend who loves him and a family who supports him and his whole life in front of him be willing to unravel all of that and throw it all away, with the likely outcome of spending the rest of his life in a cage in the American penal system?

I needed to understand the motive to know that it was a choice made of agency and autonomy. And what he ultimately described to me was that, for people of his generation, who grew up in a culture where the Internet wasn't just some instrument that you use for discreet tasks, but was really a world unto itself, it is the place where people explore who they are.

It's where they choose what to read. It's where they express their preferences and interests. It's where they make their friends. It's where they communicate in the most intimate ways, and things that you will only do if you think that other eyes aren't casting a judgmental glance at you.

And once the Internet gets converted into the most oppressive surveillance system human beings have ever known, all of that is lost. And not only is that lost collectively, but it's lost personally. And it was something that he couldn't in good conscience allow to be attacked without taking a stand in defense of it.