Quote

Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.

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
Things
Sacrifice
Willing
State
Surveillance
Talking
Understands
Whether
Privacy
Everyone
Gotten
Power
Decide
States
Everywhere

More quotes by Edward Snowden

Image
These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
Edward Snowden
Image
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
Image
I don't spend all day running hand-on-hat from shadowy figures - I'm in exile.
Edward Snowden
Image
Richard Nixon got kicked out of Washington for tapping one hotel suite. Today we're tapping every American citizen in the country, and no one has been put on trial for it or even investigated. We don't even have an inquiry into it.
Edward Snowden
Image
The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
Edward Snowden
Image
That's the key - to maintain the garden of liberty, right? This is a generational thing that we must all do continuously. We only have the rights that we protect. It doesn't matter what we say or think we have. It's not enough to believe in something it matters what we actually defend.
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
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
The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.
Edward Snowden
Image
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.
Edward Snowden
Image
The work of a generation is beginning here, with your hearings, and you have the full measure of my gratitude and support.
Edward Snowden
Image
Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.
Edward Snowden
Image
The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Edward Snowden
Image
You don't need to justify your rights as a citizen - that inverts the model of responsibility. The government must justify its intrusion into your rights. If you stop defending your rights by saying, I don't need them in this context or I can't understand this, they are no longer rights.
Edward Snowden
Image
We've got crazy little sites going up against established media behemoths.
Edward Snowden
Image
A zero-day exploit is a method of hacking a system. It's sort of a vulnerability that has an exploit written for it, sort of a key and a lock that go together to a given software package. It could be an internet web server. It could be Microsoft Office. It could be Adobe Reader or it could be Facebook.
Edward Snowden
Image
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.
Edward Snowden
Image
Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world. I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.
Edward Snowden
Image
The surveillance revelations are critically important because they revealed that our rights are being redefined in secret, by secret courts that were never intended to have that role - without the consent of the public, without even the awareness of the majority of our political representatives.
Edward Snowden
Image
The government would assert that individuals who are aware of serious wrongdoing in the intelligence community should bring their concerns to the people most responsible for that wrongdoing, and rely on those people to correct the problems that those people themselves authorized.
Edward Snowden