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Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

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
Change
Remember
Give
Wanted
Giving
Determine
Chance
Society
Didn

More quotes by 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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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
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I don't think I have committed a crime outside the domain of the US.
Edward Snowden
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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
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Russia recently passed a law - I think a terrible law - which says you have to store all of the data from Russian citizens on Russian soil just to prevent other countries from playing the same kind of legal games we're playing in this Microsoft case.
Edward Snowden
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When the US government got word that I was planning to leave Russia to go to Latin America, they brought down the plane of the - the presidential plane, which had diplomatic protection, that had the Bolivian president on board. They closed the airspace in four different countries in Europe, I believe, which was extraordinary, unprecedented.
Edward Snowden
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[Brazil] went to the UN and said, We need new standards for this. We need to take a look at what they're calling data sovereignty.
Edward Snowden
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I have had no contact with the Chinese government ... I only work with journalists.
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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When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
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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I don't spend all day running hand-on-hat from shadowy figures - I'm in exile.
Edward Snowden
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Being confronted with the realization that work you intended to benefit people is being used against them has a radicalizing effect.
Edward Snowden
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I know that fundamentally, changes to the fabric of the internet, and sort of our methods of communication, can enforce our rights.
Edward Snowden
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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
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The courts were afraid to challenge executive declarations of what would happen. Now, over the last year, we have seen - in almost every single court that has had this sort of national-security case - that they have become markedly more skeptical.
Edward Snowden
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My perspective is if you're not willing to be called a few names to help out your country, you don't care enough.
Edward Snowden
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I talk to people in the ACLU office in New York all the time. I'm able to participate in the debate and to campaign for reform. I'm just the first to come forward in the manner that I did and succeed.
Edward Snowden
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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
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I love my country. I love my family. And I have dedicated my life to both of them.
Edward Snowden