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I was living a charmed life.

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
Charmed
Living
Life

More quotes by Edward Snowden

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We don't have to ask for our privacy, we can take it back.
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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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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If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.
Edward Snowden
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If we simply follow the rules that a state imposes upon us when that state is acting contrary to the public interest, we're not actually improving anything. We're not changing anything.
Edward Snowden
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You would be surprised how effective, at least for influencing low-information voters, negative propaganda about me is.
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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Internet exchanges and internet service providers - international fiber optic landing points - these are the key tools that governments go after in order to enable their programs of mass surveillance. If they want to be able to watch the entire population of a country instead of a single individual, you have to go after those bulk interchanges.
Edward Snowden
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We need the security standards to apply to the internet. We need to be able to trust that when we send our emails through Verizon, that Verizon isn't sharing with the NSA, that Verizon isn't sharing them with the FBI or German intelligence or French intelligence or Russian intelligence or Chinese intelligence.
Edward Snowden
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Every time somebody on the internet sort of glances at us sideways, we launch an attack at them. That's not going to work out for us long term, and the U.S. have to get ahead of the problem if we're going to succeed.
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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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
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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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In the end, the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.
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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It's fascinating to see how things have changed. Basically, every time the US government gets off the soapbox of the Sunday-morning talk shows, the average American's support for the surveillance revelations grows.
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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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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It's important to remember when you start doing things like attacking hospitals through the internet, when you start attacking things like internet exchange points, when something goes wrong, people can die. If a hospital's infrastructure is affected, lifesaving equipment turns off.
Edward Snowden
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When you think about the abolition of slavery for example, for the ruling class with the rich white people owning plantations and states, and things like that, slavery was to their benefit. To oppose it didn't make any sense at all on a rational basis. But on a rights basis, on a principle basis, it made obvious, overwhelming sense.
Edward Snowden