Edward Snowden Quotes (35 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Edward Snowden: 35 quotes 13 likes

Famous Edward Snowden Quotes

“The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we've ever seen in history. Now, what they will argue, is that they don't use this for nefarious purposes against American citizens. In some ways, that's true but the real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable to them and then saying, 'well I have a gun pointed at your head. I'm not going to pull the trigger. Trust me.”

Edward Snowden

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance (HBO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M&feature=youtu.be&t=1048,
2016

“I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“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.”

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, NSA files source: 'If they want to get you, in time they will' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why, The Guardian, 10 June 2013.

“The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.”

Edward Snowden

Source: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html 2013 Christmas Message

26 December 2013

“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. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“Privacy is the right to a free mind.”

Edward Snowden

Snowden, Chomsky, and Greenwald discuss privacy https://vimeo.com/160952562, on 35:21.
2016

Edward Snowden Quotes about people

“And history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries.”

Edward Snowden

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 46.
No Place to Hide (2014)

“When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects.”

Edward Snowden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWBQGVc2kq8&t=58m19s
2013

“Saying 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 freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. It’s a deeply anti social principle because rights are not just individual, they’re collective, and what may not have value to you today may have value to an entire population, an entire people, an entire way of life tomorrow. And if you don’t stand up for it, then who will?”

Edward Snowden

Jean-Michel Jarre, Edward Snowden - Exit, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNESMafb5ZI
2015

“I don’t work with people. I don’t recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.”

Edward Snowden

nbcnews.com http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/naive-gravely-mistaken-analysts-rebut-snowden-claims-n117101
2014

“Politics: the art of convincing decent people to forget the lesser of two evils is also evil.”

Edward Snowden

Twitter June 11, 2016 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/741584993009438720?lang=en

Edward Snowden Quotes

“The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things… I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, NSA files source: 'If they want to get you, in time they will' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why, The Guardian, 10 June 2013.

World , Communication , Support

“Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information.”

Edward Snowden

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html 2013 Christmas Message

Family , Learning , Chance , Christmas

“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.”

Edward Snowden

Reddit, May 21, 2015 https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/36ru89/just_days_left_to_kill_mass_surveillance_under/crglgh2
2015

“The true measurement of a person's worth isn't what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs. If you're not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren't real.”

Edward Snowden

Penguin Books 2015 edition ISBN 978-0-241-97289-2, page 45.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Personality

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

Edward Snowden

2014
Source: theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript

“When you are in the position privileged access, like a system administrator, you are exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale then the average employee…”

Edward Snowden

Praxis films, 2013
2013

“It is we who infuse life with meaning through our actions and the stories we create with them.”

Edward Snowden

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 45.
No Place to Hide (2014)

Life

“I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.”

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' – video interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview, published by The Guardian on 8 July 2013.
Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 2

Love , Friendship , World

“If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

Democracy , Intelligence , Lying

“Abandoning open society for fear of terrorism is the only way to be defeated by it.”

Edward Snowden

2016
Source: Twitter, February 9, 2016 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/697077569250787328

Fear , Way

“For everyone out there listening, thank you and Merry Christmas.”

Edward Snowden

2013

Christmas

“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.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

History

“The types of collection in the book -– microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us –- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

Edward Snowden

Books , Thinking , Personality

“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.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

Fear

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.”

Edward Snowden

Problem

“This country is worth dying for.”

Edward Snowden

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

Country

“The government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.”

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden accuses US of illegal, aggressive campaign in his first appearance in the airport http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/12/edward-snowden-accuses-us-illegal-campaign, published by The Guardian 12 July 2013.
Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 2

Intelligence

“There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.”

Edward Snowden

Snowden's first U.S. television interview, to NBC's Brian Williams; Snowden: "Sometimes To Do The Right Thing You Have to Break a Law", Gawker (29 May 2014) http://gawker.com/snowden-sometimes-to-do-the-right-thing-you-have-to-b-1583145785

Law , History , Time

“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

Edward Snowden

Motivation

“The work of a generation is beginning here.”

Edward Snowden

“America has no functioning democracy at this moment […] I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.”

Edward Snowden

Jimmy Carter

Democracy , Thinking

“I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution.”

Edward Snowden