Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) leaker, is continuing to speak out. He just wrapped up a public Q&A session from an undisclosed location in Hong Kong, answering moderated questions via live chat on The Guardian’s website on Monday. Snowden gave more details about exactly how NSA encryption works and how the public debate was progressing from his point of view.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke Snowden’s story, noted that the chat was “subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure Internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.”

A reader named Mathius1 asked a question probably on the minds of many Ars readers: “Is encrypting my e-mail any good at defeating the NSA surveillance? Is my data protected by standard encryption?”

“Encryption works,” Snowden responded. “Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”

Another reader asked, "So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate?"

Snowden insisted the attention on him as a person was unwarranted. "Initially I was very encouraged," he replied. "Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."

Many questions came not only from readers, but also from journalists from other media outlets. Kimberly Dozier, the Associated Press’ intelligence correspondent, asked how Snowden responded to American government officials calling him a “traitor.”

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM. Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. 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.

Snowden again emphatically said his leaks were justified. "I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets," he wrote. "I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target."

In response to a question about whether the documents would continue to leak if he was stopped, Snowden said the cat was definitively out of the bag. "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he wrote. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

NSA uses a “weasel word” to avoid reality of domestic spying

Earlier, New York University professor Anthony De Rosa asked Snowden what he meant by the NSA's ability to have “direct access” to digital communication. He wanted to know if NSA analysts had the ability to warrantlessly listen to the content of domestic calls, and Snowden did not mince words.

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, e-mail, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on—it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters, a British intelligence agency], the number of audited queries is only 5 percent of those performed. 2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a police department would have to. The "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald followed up. "When you say 'someone at NSA still has the content of your communications,' what do you mean?" he asked. "Do you mean they have a record of it or the actual content?"

Both. If I target for example an e-mail address, for example under FAA 702, and that e-mail address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time—and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

Intelligence officials “baldly lying to the public”

Noted computer security researcher and Tor developer Jacob Appelbaum asked, "Do you believe that the treatment of [former NSA employee William Binney], [former NSA employee Thomas Drake], and others influenced your path? Do you feel the 'system works,' so to speak?"

Binney, Drake, [former CIA officer John Kiriakou], and [Bradley Manning] are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these Draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response. This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the president who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny—they should be setting the example of transparency.

Finally, another reader named AhBrightWings asked what Snowden's breaking point was. Just how did decide to come forward?