Quote

We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world.

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
World
People
Nsa
Closely
Watches
Watch
Anyone
Else

More quotes by Edward Snowden

Image
All I was was a mechanism.
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
[Occupy Wall Street] had an impact on consciousness. It was not effective in realizing change.
Edward Snowden
Image
Has the center of gravity shifted such that all governments have greater powers and fewer restrictions than they ever had, and are empowered by technology in a way that no government ever was in the past?
Edward Snowden
Image
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
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
There was a real choice when [Barack Obama] became president. It was a very difficult choice - to say, We're not going to hold senior officials to account with the same laws that every other citizen in the country is held to, or This is a nation that believes in the rule of law.
Edward Snowden
Image
If I am traitor, who did I betray? I gave all my information to the American public, to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason, I think people really need to consider who they think they're working for. The public is supposed to be their boss, not their enemy.
Edward Snowden
Image
Before 2013, if you said the NSA was making records of everybody's phone calls and the [Government Communications Headquarters] was monitoring lawyers and journalists, people raised eyebrows and called you a conspiracy theorist. Those days are over.
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
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
Image
Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.
Edward Snowden
Image
The Iraq war that I signed up for was launched on false premises. The American people were misled. Now, whether that was due to bad faith or simply mistakes in intelligence, I can't say for sure. But I can say it shows the problem of putting too much faith in intelligence systems without debating them in public.
Edward Snowden
Image
In the United States and some of the other countries involved it's sort of a five eyes global spying alliance. That's the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. They've had a little bit of a more muscular public response. Now, they haven't been satisfying or really meaningful in any country yet. But they have been engaging.
Edward Snowden
Image
We have to be able to ask questions in order to answer them.
Edward Snowden
Image
Let's put it this way. The United States government has assembled a massive investigation team into me personally, into my work with the journalists, and they still have no idea what documents were provided to the journalist, what they have, what they don't have, because encryption works.
Edward Snowden
Image
I'm ultimately satisfied that we know a little bit more about how the world really works.
Edward Snowden
Image
I would argue that security and liberty, security and privacy are not actually opposing. The only place those can be oppositional is in the realm of rhetoric but not fact.
Edward Snowden
Image
As for labeling someone a whistleblower, I think it does them - it does all of us - a disservice, because it otherizes us.
Edward Snowden
Image
And that's not something I'm willing to support, it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under.
Edward Snowden