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I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American.
Edward Snowden
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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
American
Nsa
Traitor
Neither
Hero
More quotes by Edward Snowden
When it is made to appear as though not knowing everything about everyone is an existential crisis, then you feel that bending the rules is okay. Once people hate you for bending those rules, breaking them becomes a matter of survival.
Edward Snowden
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
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
The only way I could be extradited is through the principle of what my lawyers call politics trumps law.
Edward Snowden
I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
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
[Bill] Binney designed ThinThread, an NSA program that used encryption to try to make mass surveillance less objectionable. It would still have been unlawful and unconstitutional.
Edward Snowden
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.
Edward Snowden
They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we as the public trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?
Edward Snowden
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
Edward Snowden
Extremists are not going to disappear.
Edward Snowden
The charges [government] brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense.
Edward Snowden
These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.
Edward Snowden
These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
Edward Snowden
As a general rule, US-based multinationals should not be trusted until they prove otherwise. This is sad, because they have the capability to provide the best and most trusted services in the world if they actually desire to do so.
Edward Snowden
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
When we talk about the assertion of basically new government privileges with weak or no justification, we don't even have to look at international law to see the failings in them.
Edward Snowden
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
Going all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, it is clear that the government is not concerned with damage to national security, because in none of these cases was there damage.
Edward Snowden
I was living a charmed life.
Edward Snowden
