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If you seek to help, join the open source community and fight to keep the spirit of the press alive and the internet free. I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

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
Light
Community
Presses
Government
Fighting
Press
Help
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Internet
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Keep
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More quotes by Edward Snowden

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When Clapper raised his hand and lied to the American public, was anyone tried? Were any charges brought? Within 24 hours of going public, I had three charges against me.
Edward Snowden
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When we look at how, constitutionally, only Congress can declare war, and that is routinely ignored. Not NATO or the UN, but Congress has to authorize these endless wars, and it isn't.
Edward Snowden
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There's not much value to us attacking Chinese systems. We might take a few computers offline. We might take a factory offline. We might steal secrets from a university research programs, and even something high-tech. But how much more does the United States spend on research and development than China does?
Edward Snowden
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My whole model, from the beginning, was not to personally publish a single document. I provided these documents to journalists because I didn't want my biases to decide what's in the public interest and what is not.
Edward Snowden
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I believe strongly that Occupy Wall Street had such limits because the local authorities were able to enforce, basically in our imaginations, an image of what proper civil disobedience is - one that is simply ineffective.
Edward Snowden
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One journalist said that everybody in Russia is miserable. Russia is a terrible place. And I'm going to end up miserable and I'm going to be a drunk and I'm never going to do anything. I don't drink. I've never been drunk in my life. And they talk about Russia like it's the worst place on earth. Russia's great.
Edward Snowden
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One of the kind of unexpectedly liberating things of becoming this global fugitive is the fact that you don't worry so much about tomorrow. You think more about today. And unexpectedly, I like that very much.
Edward Snowden
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Too often we forget that social and political movements don't happen overnight. They don't bring change immediately - you have to build a critical mass of understanding of the issues.
Edward Snowden
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The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
Edward Snowden
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Bulk collection means all of your communications are being secretly intercepted. They are being stolen as they cross India, and they're being stored in these silos so that they can be rifled through at the convenience of secret agents, basically.
Edward Snowden
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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
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If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.
Edward Snowden
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Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an e-mail, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace, and the Government has decided that it's good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you've never been suspected of doing a crime.
Edward Snowden
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The public don't want to authorize the internet to become a battleground. We need to do everything we can as a society to keep that a neutral zone, to keep that an economic zone that can reflect our values, both politically, socially, and economically.
Edward Snowden
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Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.
Edward Snowden
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I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinised most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.
Edward Snowden
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We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.
Edward Snowden
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I considered bringing forward information about these surveillance programs prior to the election, but I held off because I believed that [Barack] Obama was genuine when he said he was going to change things. I wanted to give the democratic process time to work.
Edward Snowden
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I have used mass surveillance to target people, so I do know how it works.
Edward Snowden
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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