Quote

I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

Edward Snowden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Darkest
Corners
Evil
Fear
Light
Government

More quotes by Edward Snowden

Image
Internet exchanges and internet service providers - international fiber optic landing points - these are the key tools that governments go after in order to enable their programs of mass surveillance. If they want to be able to watch the entire population of a country instead of a single individual, you have to go after those bulk interchanges.
Edward Snowden
Image
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
Image
I don't care if I end up in jail or Guantánamo or whatever, kicked out of a plane with two gunshots in the face. I did what I did because I believe it is the right thing to do, and I will continue to do that.
Edward Snowden
Image
As inequality grows, the basic bonds of social fraternity are fraying - as we discussed in regard to Occupy Wall Street. As tensions increase, people will become more willing to engage in protest. But that moment is not now.
Edward Snowden
Image
I'm not a movie guy. I don't know all this stuff that comes with celebrity. I don't know who the actors will be and stuff like that. But anybody who wants to talk about the issues - that's great.
Edward Snowden
Image
We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.
Edward Snowden
Image
We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world.
Edward Snowden
Image
The only way I could be extradited is through the principle of what my lawyers call politics trumps law.
Edward Snowden
Image
Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to the government, but our futures.
Edward Snowden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
In the United States and some of the other countries involved it's sort of a five eyes global spying alliance. That's the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. They've had a little bit of a more muscular public response. Now, they haven't been satisfying or really meaningful in any country yet. But they have been engaging.
Edward Snowden
Image
Initially I was very encouraged. 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
Image
We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We're subjects, and we have rulers.
Edward Snowden
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
Edward Snowden
Image
There's no saving me.
Edward Snowden
Image
We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence.
Edward Snowden
Image
There are cyber threats out there, this is a dangerous world, and we have to be safe, we have to be secure no matter the cost.
Edward Snowden