Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
Edward Snowden
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Edward Snowden
Age: 41
Born: 1983
Born: June 21
Computer Scientist
Dissident
Intelligence Analyst
Intelligence Officer
Security Guard
System Administrator
Whistleblower
Elizabeth City
North Carolina
Edward Joseph Snowden
Ed Snowden
Fundamentally
Dangerous
Democracy
Power
Government
Thing
Subverting
More quotes by Edward Snowden
If I and other whistleblowers are sentenced to long years in prison without so much as a chance to explain our motivations to a jury, it will have a deeply chilling effect on future whistleblowers working as I did to expose government abuse and overreach. It will chill speech. It will corrode the quality of our democracy.
Edward Snowden
People have to be free to investigate computer security. People have to be free to look for the vulnerabilities and create proof of concept code to show that they are true vulnerabilities in order for us to secure our systems.
Edward Snowden
I saw things that reached a point that I could no longer conscientiously participate with them. And I simply do what I could to allow the public to make a better decision about whether or not these things should continue.
Edward Snowden
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.
Edward Snowden
If you begin acting contrary to the public's interest, and there is no alternative governmental model, with which you're willing to engage, we, the people, will have to put forth our own extra governmental models and methods of trying to restore the balance of liberty to the liberal tradition of Western society.
Edward Snowden
Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.
Edward Snowden
The chairs [in Congress] are part of the Gang of Eight. They get briefed on every covert-action program and everything like that. They know where all the bodies are buried. At the same time, they get far more campaign donations than anybody else from defense contractors, from intelligence corporations, from private military companies.
Edward Snowden
My government revoked my passport intentionally to leave me exiled. If they really wanted to capture me, they would've allowed me to travel to Latin America, because the CIA can operate with impunity down there. They did not want that they chose to keep me in Russia.
Edward Snowden
Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.
Edward Snowden
It's becoming less and less the National Security Agency and more and more the national surveillance agency. It's gaining more offensive powers with each passing year.
Edward Snowden
The new iPhone encryption does not stop them from accessing copies of your pictures or whatever that are uploaded to, for example, Apple's cloud service, which are still legally accessible because those are not encrypted. It only protects what's physically on the phone.
Edward Snowden
I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end.
Edward Snowden
We've learned that we've allowed technological capabilities to dictate policies and practices, rather than ensuring that our laws and values guide our technological capabilities.
Edward Snowden
The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.
Edward Snowden
No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.
Edward Snowden
Imagine, if you will, you're sitting at my desk in Hawaii. You have access to the entire world, as far as you can see it. Last several days, content of internet communications. Every email that's sent. Every website that's visited by every individual. Every text message that somebody sends on their phone. Every phone call they make.
Edward Snowden
The [George W.] Bush administration marked a very serious and profoundly negative turning point - not just for the nation, but for the international order, because we started to govern on the idea of might makes right. And that's a very old, toxic and infectious idea.
Edward Snowden
I have used mass surveillance to target people, so I do know how it works.
Edward Snowden
How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?
Edward Snowden
It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.
Edward Snowden
