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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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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
Doe
Think
Thinking
Labeling
Disservice
Someone

More quotes by Edward Snowden

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I'm still alive, and I don't lose sleep because I have done what I feel I needed to do, it was the right thing to do and I am not going to be afraid.
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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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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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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We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism.
Edward Snowden
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The surveillance revelations are critically important because they revealed that our rights are being redefined in secret, by secret courts that were never intended to have that role - without the consent of the public, without even the awareness of the majority of our political representatives.
Edward Snowden
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People in both parties from the congressional intelligence committees - all these co-opted officials who play cheerleader for spy agencies - go on these Sunday shows and they say: Snowden was a traitor. He works against Americans. He works for the Chinese. Oh, wait, he left Hong Kong - he works for the Russians.
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
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I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that.
Edward Snowden
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Radicals are not going to disappear. They're going to go underground. They're going to be hardened. And they're not going to be exposed to contrary ideas made by educated people who can make real, convincing, and persuasive arguments to deradicalise these people.
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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The government would assert that individuals who are aware of serious wrongdoing in the intelligence community should bring their concerns to the people most responsible for that wrongdoing, and rely on those people to correct the problems that those people themselves authorized.
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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I'm not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be addressed.
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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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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As inequality grows, the basic bonds of social fraternity are fraying - as we discussed in regard to Occupy Wall Street. As tensions increase, people will become more willing to engage in protest. But that moment is not now.
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
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I read these polls because civil-liberties organizations tell me I need to be aware of public opinion.
Edward Snowden
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Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.
Edward Snowden