Edward Snowden Quotes

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.

I think the public still isn't aware of the frequency with which the cyber-attacks, as they're being called in the press, are being used by governments around the world, not just the US.

When people talk about Web 2.0, they mean that when the Internet, the World Wide Web, first became popular, it was one way only.

There are unquestionable violations of our Constitution.

When we think in the context of the last decade's infringements upon personal liberty and the last year's revelations, it's not about surveillance. It's about liberty.

I love my country. I love my family. And I have dedicated my life to both of them.

I've been watching The Wire recently.

I'm not a spy for Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

I read these polls because civil-liberties organizations tell me I need to be aware of public opinion.

Even if it were, you run into the same problem with international commerce: if you create a device that is famous for compromised security and it has an American back door, nobody is gonna buy it.

When it comes to political engagement, I'm not a politician - I'm an engineer.

If a single Russian source would come forward, he would be in hot water. And in the United States, what I did appearing at that [Vladimir] Putin press conference was not worth the price.

Technology provides us means outside of governments to begin enforcing our rights, enforcing protection of civil liberties, regardless of law, through the implementation of systems and standards.

I've talked to a lot of pretty good lawyers around the world. I'm non-extraditable. That's the real reason the US government was pissed off, even when I was initially in Hong Kong.

[Barton ] Gellman printed a great anecdote: he showed two Google engineers a slide that showed how the NSA was doing this, and the engineers "exploded in profanity."

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.

I must say I'm surprised by how skeptical of the [Barack] Obama administration The Nation has been.

The charges [government] brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense.

We've already seen, in practically every country around the world where these issues have been covered, that the general public has recoiled at the ideology behind these programs.

We decentralise the ability to decide the level of publicity that's attached to any of our communications.

If we simply follow the rules that a state imposes upon us when that state is acting contrary to the public interest, we're not actually improving anything. We're not changing anything.

I do everything on the computer. TV is obsolete technology for me.

Too often we forget that social and political movements don't happen overnight. They don't bring change immediately - you have to build a critical mass of understanding of the issues.

Increasingly we're seeing these ultra-partisan sites getting larger and larger readerships because people are self-selecting themselves into communities.

What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one's country.

Governments cannot require individuals, they cannot require the public as a body, and they cannot require corporations to make investigation and law enforcement easy for them in a liberal society.

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.

Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?

When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose.

When you use any kind of internet based capability, any kind of electronic capability, to cause damage to a private entity or a foreign nation or a foreign actor, these are potential acts of war.

[Occupy Wall Street] had an impact on consciousness. It was not effective in realizing change.

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.

Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech.

We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism.

I'm not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be addressed.

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.

People do not like being lied to, and they do not like having their rights violated. So as soon as [officials] stop making arguments, you see support for me starts to rise.

I don't think I have committed a crime outside the domain of the US.

Since the revelations, we have seen a massive sea change in the technological basis and makeup of the Internet.

In video games, one of the most helpless against injustice can even mighty.

These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.

Study after study has show that human behavior changes when we know we’re being watched. Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively *are* less free.

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

That's the beauty of the Internet is that we're no longer tied to our communities by physical connections.

What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?

I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

We're losing our way as a society. If we don't stand up, if we don't say what we think those rights should be, and if we don't protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them.

No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.