Top 100 Edward Snowden Quotes
#1. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American.
Edward Snowden
#2. There is a policy response that needs to occur. There is also a technical response that needs to occur. It is the development community that can really craft the solutions and make sure we are safe.
Edward Snowden
#3. If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.
Edward Snowden
#4. You shouldn't send an email from a computer that's associated with you if you don't want it to be tracked back to you. You don't want to hack the power plant from your house if you don't want them to follow the trail back and see your IP address.
Edward Snowden
#5. Acting Government officials, they said they wanted - they would be happy, they would love to put a bullet in my head, to poison me as I was returning from the grocery store, and have me die in the shower.
Edward Snowden
#6. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Edward Snowden
#7. Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.
Edward Snowden
#8. I went to a website the other day and right at the top of the page it showed me my ip address. It was the most disturbing moment I have ever experienced. This website even told me what internet browser I was using, and what day it was. Computers can do anything.
Edward Snowden
#9. We have the means and we have the technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all, without any policy changes.
Edward Snowden
#10. The sad truth is that societies that demand whistleblowers be martyrs often find themselves without either, and always when it matters the most.
Edward Snowden
#11. They are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.
Edward Snowden
#12. When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose.
Edward Snowden
#13. I think the public still isn't aware of the frequency with which the cyber-attacks, as they're being called in the press, are being used by governments around the world, not just the US.
Edward Snowden
#14. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.
Edward Snowden
#15. As a general rule, so long as you have any choice at all, you should never route through or peer with the UK under any circumstances. Their fibers are radioactive, and even the Queen's selfies to the pool boy get logged.
Edward Snowden
#16. I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.
Edward Snowden
#17. The work of a generation is beginning here, with your hearings, and you have the full measure of my gratitude and support.
Edward Snowden
#18. When it is made to appear as though not knowing everything about everyone is an existential crisis, then you feel that bending the rules is okay. Once people hate you for bending those rules, breaking them becomes a matter of survival.
Edward Snowden
#19. I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law.
Edward Snowden
#20. The NSA was actually concerned back in the time of the crypto-wars with improving American security. Nowadays, we see that their priority is weakening our security, just so they have a better chance of keeping an eye on us.
Edward Snowden
#21. You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.
Edward Snowden
#22. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists.
Edward Snowden
#23. 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
#24. I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
Edward Snowden
#25. My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
Edward Snowden
#26. The community of technical experts who really manage the internet, who built the internet and maintain it, are becoming increasingly concerned about the activities of agencies like the NSA or Cyber Command, because what we see is that defense is becoming less of a priority than offense.
Edward Snowden
#27. There is a technical solution to every political problem,
Edward Snowden
#28. Privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be,
Edward Snowden
#29. There are proxies, proxy servers on the internet, and this is very typical for hackers to use. They create what are called proxy chains where they gain access to a number of different systems around the world, sometimes by hacking these, and they use them as sort of relay boxes.
Edward Snowden
#30. The internet is shared critical infrastructure for everyone on earth. It's not supposed to be a domain of warfare. We're not supposed to be putting the Unied States' economy on the frontlines in the battleground.
Edward Snowden
#31. There's no question that the US is engaged in economic spying. If there's information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security of the United States, they'll go after that information and they'll take it.
Edward Snowden
#32. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.
Edward Snowden
#33. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,
Edward Snowden
#34. We have to be able to reject disproportionate and unjustified responses in the cyber domain just as we do in the physical domain.
Edward Snowden
#35. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
Edward Snowden
#36. I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.
Edward Snowden
#37. When it comes to the internet, when it comes to the United States' technical economy, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.
Edward Snowden
#38. 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
#39. My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.
Edward Snowden
#40. I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.
Edward Snowden
#42. The public don't want to authorize the internet to become a battleground. We need to do everything we can as a society to keep that a neutral zone, to keep that an economic zone that can reflect our values, both politically, socially, and economically.
Edward Snowden
#43. What has a great value to us as a nation is the internet itself. The internet is critical infrastructure to the United States. We use the internet for every communication that businesses rely on every day.
Edward Snowden
#44. I don't want the stage. I'm terrified of giving these talking heads some distraction, some excuse to jeopardize, smear, and delegitimize a very important movement.
Edward Snowden
#45. These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual, even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.
Edward Snowden
#46. Defending ourselves from internet-based attacks, internet-originated attacks, is much, much more important than our ability to launch attacks against similar targets in foreign countries.
Edward Snowden
#47. A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises.
Edward Snowden
#48. One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.
Edward Snowden
#49. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.
Edward Snowden
#50. If an adversary didn't target our power plants but they did target the core routers, the backbones that tie our internet connections together, entire parts of the United States could be cut off. That would have a tremendous impact on us as a society and it would have a policy backlash.
Edward Snowden
#51. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.
Edward Snowden
#52. We need to put the security back in the National Security Agency. We can't have the national surveillance agency.
Edward Snowden
#53. 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
#54. Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.
Edward Snowden
#55. People have to be free to investigate computer security. People have to be free to look for the vulnerabilities and create proof of concept code to show that they are true vulnerabilities in order for us to secure our systems.
Edward Snowden
#56. The United States is more reliant on the technical systems. We're more reliant on the critical infrastructure of the internet than any other nation out there. And when there's such a low barrier to entering the domain of cyber-attacks we're starting a fight that we can't win.
Edward Snowden
#57. What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?
Edward Snowden
#58. We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We're subjects, and we have rulers.
Edward Snowden
#59. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things.
Edward Snowden
#60. The 'music' is not an open court and a fair trial.
Edward Snowden
#62. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
Edward Snowden
#63. I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it.
Edward Snowden
#64. I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.
Edward Snowden
#65. FBI creating a world where citizens rely on Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around.
Edward Snowden
#66. After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.
Edward Snowden
#67. The internet is the most complex system that humans have ever invented. And with every internet enabled operation that we've seen so far, all of these offensive operations, we see knock on effects. We see unintended consequences.
Edward Snowden
#68. All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
Edward Snowden
#69. Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.
Edward Snowden
#70. We have got a CIA station just up the road - the consulate here in Hong Kong - and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.
Edward Snowden
#72. Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.
Edward Snowden
#73. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.
Edward Snowden
#74. I don't want to hide. If I get arrested, I get arrested.
Edward Snowden
#75. Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President
Edward Snowden
#76. America should be cooling down the tensions in the internet, making it a more trusted environment, making it a more secure environment, making it a more reliable environment, because that's the foundation of our economy and our future.
Edward Snowden
#77. 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
#78. There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.
Edward Snowden
#79. It's becoming less and less the National Security Agency and more and more the national surveillance agency. It's gaining more offensive powers with each passing year.
Edward Snowden
#80. You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we're afraid, we don't care about those values very much.
Edward Snowden
#81. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.
Edward Snowden
#82. We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.
Edward Snowden
#83. If you ask anybody at Cyber Command or look at any of the job listings for openings for their positions, you'll see that the one thing they don't prioritize is computer network defense. It's all about computer network attack and computer network exploitation at Cyber Command.
Edward Snowden
#84. We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence.
Edward Snowden
#85. I can do more good outside of prison ... This country is worth dying for.
Edward Snowden
#86. I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance.
Edward Snowden
#87. These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
Edward Snowden
#88. 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
#89. Every time we walk on to the field of battle and the field of battle is the internet, it doesn't matter if we shoot our opponents a hundred times and hit every time. As long as they've hit us once, we've lost, because the U.S. is so much more reliant on those systems.
Edward Snowden
#90. I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.
Edward Snowden
#91. The United States need to be focusing more on creating a more secure, more reliable, more robust, and more trusted internet, not one that's weaker, not one that relies on this systemic model of exploiting every vulnerability, every threat out there.
Edward Snowden
#92. Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.
Edward Snowden
#93. Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.
Edward Snowden
#94. 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
#95. The majority of terrorist attacks that have been disrupted in the United States have been disrupted due to things like the Time Square bomber, who was caught by a hotdog vendor, not a mass surveillance program, not a cyber-espionage campaign.
Edward Snowden
#96. It's really hard to take that step-not only do I believe in something, I believe in it enough that I'm willing to set my own life on fire and burn it to the ground.
Edward Snowden
#97. There are cyber threats out there, this is a dangerous world, and we have to be safe, we have to be secure no matter the cost.
Edward Snowden
#98. We've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.
Edward Snowden
#99. I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.
Edward Snowden
#100. We're losing our way as a society. If we don't stand up, if we don't say what we think those rights should be, and if we don't protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them.
Edward Snowden
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