The most important thing to ...

The most important thing to the United States is not being able to attack our adversaries, the most important thing is to be able to defend ourselves. And we can\'t do that as long as we\'re subverting our own security standards for the sake of surveillance.
The most important thing to the United States is not being able to attack our adversaries, the most important thing is to be able to defend ourselves. And we can't do that as long as we're subverting our own security standards for the sake of surveillance.

Quotes from the same author

It also comes down to parenting. It is important to know what your beliefs are, and that you have to stand up for them or you don't really believe in them. You know, my father and mother - in fact, every member of my immediate family - have worked for the federal government. Sometimes misunderstood is that I didn't stand up to overthrow the system.
Defending ourselves from internet-based attacks, internet-originated attacks, is much, much more important than our ability to launch attacks against similar targets in foreign countries.
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.
The issue is we're losing leverage. Governments are increasingly getting more power and we are increasingly losing our ability to control that power, and even to be aware of that power.
We decentralise the ability to decide the level of publicity that's attached to any of our communications.