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Richard Stallman, the president of the Free Software Foundation, has long been an advocate of individual liberties. Mr. Stallman says software should give users freedom and not restrict their actions. He recently shared with CIO Journal’s Rachael King his thoughts on how technology is being used in the context of government surveillance. The following is an edited transcript of his remarks: 

CIO Journal: With Edward Snowden and the NSA revelations, do you think that general awareness of security and privacy and individual rights has been raised? 

Richard Stallman: Yes, that’s a very good thing. Snowden is a great hero. Three cheers for Edward Snowden. 

CIO Journal: Why, in your opinion, is he a hero?

RS: Because he told us about the dirty things our government and other governments are doing to us secretly. There’s a famous question: who watches the watchmen? Now we know the answer. Whistleblowers like Snowden watch the watchmen if they can. This is why we must make sure it’s safe to be a whistleblower. If we want democracy, we must make it safe to be a whistleblower. But, that’s not easy to do with all the surveillance there is because the surveillance is used to identify whistleblowers.

If you require that much heroism to be a whistleblower and not get in prison, we’re not going to have enough whistleblowers. So, we have to make it so we can’t catch whistleblowers.

CIO Journal: How do we do that?

RS: First I want to explain what will not work. Laws that limit when the government is allowed to access the massive databases that are being created about all of us will not do the job. The reason is that once the government labels a whistleblower as a criminal, that will be the excuse to look at the databases. It’s a criminal investigation.  

Now, the state has to have some surveillance power. It has to be able to investigate after a crime is committed. What it must not be allowed to do is access databases about everybody that were collected. It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s in the government’s hands, or the phone company’s hands, as long as the government can consult it whenever it decides it’s allowed to.

We need to make sure those databases do not exist.

CIO Journal: Will that hamper legitimate criminal investigations?

RS: Of course it will. A state which has access to all the data it takes to find every real criminal is a state with no democracy. We have got to decide what we want, what our priorities are. Those who want more surveillance will always say, give us more data about everybody and we’ll find some more criminals but they don’t find the big criminals. Any claim that we need more surveillance of everybody in order to catch criminals in the U.S. is a joke.

CIO Journal: Are there ways in which technology communities can respond to surveillance and mistreatment of users?

RS: We must demand the redesign of systems that don’t belong to us, such as phone company systems, Internet service provider systems, license plate cameras, toll payment systems, all sorts of things.

Write to rachael.king@wsj.com