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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
Didn
Change
Remember
Give
Wanted
Giving
Determine
Chance
Society

More quotes by Edward Snowden

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I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is.
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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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
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Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?
Edward Snowden
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Until we reform our laws and until we fix the excesses of these old policies that we inherited in the post-9/11 era, we're not going to be able to put the security back in the NSA.
Edward Snowden
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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
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I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose.
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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Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.
Edward Snowden
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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
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The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
Edward Snowden
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There have been so many individuals who have really put a lot on the line. That they've sacrificed so much to try to protect the principle of source protection in the journalism world. And I think Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks, and Sarah Harrison have really been extraordinary in standing up for that.
Edward Snowden
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We've learned that we've allowed technological capabilities to dictate policies and practices, rather than ensuring that our laws and values guide our technological capabilities.
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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Something we have to remember is that everything about the internet is interconnected. All of our systems are not just common to us because of the network links between them, but because of the software packages, because of the hardware devices that comprise it. The same router that's deployed in the United States is deployed in China.
Edward Snowden
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Imagine, if you will, you're sitting at my desk in Hawaii. You have access to the entire world, as far as you can see it. Last several days, content of internet communications. Every email that's sent. Every website that's visited by every individual. Every text message that somebody sends on their phone. Every phone call they make.
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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You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.
Edward Snowden
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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
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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