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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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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
Law
Excess
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Eras
Going
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Reform
Excesses
Laws
Nsa
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Security
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More quotes by Edward Snowden

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As for labeling someone a whistleblower, I think it does them - it does all of us - a disservice, because it otherizes us.
Edward Snowden
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If we can't have an open and honest debate about the value of ideas in a university in Glasgow, or Boston, or anywhere else in the world, then where are they going to go?
Edward Snowden
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There is a technical solution to every political problem...
Edward Snowden
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We've got crazy little sites going up against established media behemoths.
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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The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Edward Snowden
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If you begin acting contrary to the public's interest, and there is no alternative governmental model, with which you're willing to engage, we, the people, will have to put forth our own extra governmental models and methods of trying to restore the balance of liberty to the liberal tradition of Western society.
Edward Snowden
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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
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Extremists are not going to disappear.
Edward Snowden
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The internet exchange is sort of the core points where all of the international cables come together, where all of the internet service providers come together, and they trade lines with each other. These are priority one targets for any sort of espionage agency, because they provide access to so many people's communications.
Edward Snowden
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[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
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Americans 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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US administration does not want me to return. People forget how I ended up in Russia. They waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia, because it's the most effective attack they have against me, given the political climate in the United States.
Edward Snowden
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So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading.
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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At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.
Edward Snowden
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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
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The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.
Edward Snowden
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I wasn't trying to change the laws or slow down the machine. Maybe I should have. My critics say that I was not revolutionary enough. But they forget that I am a product of the system. I worked those desks, I know those people and I still have some faith in them, that the services can be reformed.
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