Top 100 Snowden's Quotes
#1. For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
Barton Gellman
#2. In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material, and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago.
Daniel Ellsberg
#3. Snowden's itinerary does, however, seem to bear the fingerprints of Julian Assange. Assange was often quick to criticise the US and other western nations when they abused human rights. But he was reluctant to speak out against governments that supported his personal efforts to avoid extradition.
Luke Harding
#4. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.
Joseph Heller
#5. There is no denying that Snowden's dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance leviathan." (p.299)
Edward Jay Epstein
#6. 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
#7. Snowden has yet to tell me anything that was a fact that I have been able to rebut or that anybody in the U.S. government I have talked to has been able to rebut.
Barton Gellman
#8. 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
#9. Edward Snowden may not be a Chinese mole, but he might as well be. He's just handed Beijing a major score, while the NSA struggles to pick up the pieces - and the rest of us pay the price in terms of future national security.
Arthur L. Herman
#10. The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo Eric Schmidt's view that privacy is for people who have something to hide. But none of them would willingly give me the passwords to their email accounts, or allow video cameras in their homes.
Glenn Greenwald
#11. The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night.
Edward Snowden
#12. 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
#13. I Don't care which president is sucking your dick at the moment, I will not be a party to the killing of innocent men!
Brandice Snowden Demon's Veil
#14. 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
#15. The [Edward] Snowden disclosures created this perception that people's privacy was being put at significant risk.
Michael Morell
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. Despite Russia's move to raise interest rates this week, the value of the ruble has continued to crash. Russia's economy is so bad, Edward Snowden had to put government secrets on Craigslist.
Jimmy Fallon
#19. It's customary to stand when a lady enters and leaves the room, Mr. Snowden." Jacob cut his dark eyes to her. "If and when I'm in the presence of a lady, I'll be sure to do that.
A.E. Via
#20. 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
#21. We should never allow computers to make inherently governmental decisions in terms of the application of military force, even if that's happening on the internet.
Edward Snowden
#22. The internet has to be protected from intrusive monitoring or else the medium upon which we all rely for the basis of our economy and our normal life, we'll lose that, and it's going to have broad effects as a consequence that we cannot predict.
Edward Snowden
#23. When people are talking about cyber weapons, digital weapons, what they really mean is a malicious program that's used for a military purpose. A cyber weapon could be something as simple as an old virus from 1995 that just happens to still be effective if you use it for that purpose.
Edward Snowden
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. I don't think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. I think that's why he fled, [because] that is what he faced.
Rand Paul
#27. Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer's approach to problem-solving.
Barton Gellman
#28. When the lights go out at a power plant sometime in the future, we're going to know that that's a consequence of deprioritizing defense for the sake of an advantage in terms of offense.
Edward Snowden
#29. Snowden was extremely good at digital self-defense. When he was employed by the C.I.A. and N.S.A., one of his jobs was to teach U.S. national security officials and C.I.A. employees how to protect their data in high-threat digital environments.
Luke Harding
#30. Edward Snowden gave a little press conference today. He is apparently seeking temporary asylum in Russia. Because, you know, when you're tired of the government snooping into everything you do, Putin's Russia is definitely the place you want to go.
Bill Maher
#31. In the post-Snowden world, you need to enable others to build their own cloud and have mobility of applications. That's both because of the physicality of computing - where the speed of light still matters - and because of geopolitics.
Satya Nadella
#32. 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
#33. I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them.
Tom Morello
#34. Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.
Edward Snowden
#35. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers.
Edward Snowden
#36. You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk.
Edward Snowden
#37. It's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.
Edward Snowden
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. I think in some ways what Snowden is, is he's a mix of a cold war spy novel and post-9/11 spy novel.
Alex Berenson
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. Work's just like school, except this time it's a life sentence. No parole.
Colette Snowden
#47. You can show a guy sort of peeking over the wall, you can see a guy tunneling underneath, you can see a guy going through the front door. All of those, in cyber terms, are vulnerabilities, because it's not that you have to look for one hole of a specific type. It's the whole paradigm.
Edward Snowden
#48. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.
Edward Snowden
#49. Edward Snowden, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, professes to have had access to whatever he wanted to know about anyone's anything. If he's telling the truth, why does he have such permeability without any government oversight? Is that OK with you?
Henry Rollins
#50. 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
#51. The United States need to put internet processes, policies, and procedures in place with real laws that forbid going beyond the borders of what's reasonable to ensure that the only time that we and other countries around the world exercise these authorities are when it is absolutely necessary.
Edward Snowden
#52. 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
#53. Those of us who fought the crypto wars, as we call them, thought we had won them in the 1990s. What the Snowden documents have shown us is that instead of dropping the notion of getting backdoor government access, the NSA and FBI just kept doing it in secret.
Bruce Schneier
#54. They are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.
Edward Snowden
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#60. 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
#61. One of the most surreal aspects of the NSA stories based on the Snowden documents is how they made even the most paranoid conspiracy theorists seem like paragons of reason and common sense.
Bruce Schneier
#62. Our founders did not write that We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.
Edward Snowden
#63. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial?
Alex Berenson
#64. 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
#66. There are programs such as the NSA paying RSA $10 million to use an insecure encryption standard by default in their products. That's making us more vulnerable not just to the snooping of our domestic agencies, but also foreign agencies.
Edward Snowden
#67. As a general rule, US-based multinationals should not be trusted until they prove otherwise. This is sad, because they have the capability to provide the best and most trusted services in the world if they actually desire to do so.
Edward Snowden
#68. 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
#69. We need to think about encryption not as this sort of arcane, black art. It's a basic protection.
Edward Snowden
#70. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watching what's happening, and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide.' The public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong,
Edward Snowden
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. 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
#76. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American.
Edward Snowden
#77. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
Edward Snowden
#78. On December 1, 2012, I received my first communication from Edward Snowden,
Anonymous
#79. You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.
Edward Snowden
#80. Purvis. This is my associate, Samantha Kofer. We've been hired to get our client out of jail. Snowden took a step back as Mattie pressed ahead. Samantha, treading water, wasn't sure what to do, so
John Grisham
#81. Snowden said carefully, 'I've been unable to get in touch with the person I thought might know about our mutual friend's difficulty.'
The guy sounded like he worked for the CIA. Or Charles Dickens.
Josh Lanyon
#82. It's critical how we want to use these spy programs, these electronic capabilities, where we want to draw the line, and who should approve these programs, these decisions, and at what level, for engaging in operations that could lead us as a nation into a war.
Edward Snowden
#83. Cyber Command is supposed to be defending our critical infrastructure at home, but they are spending so much time looking at how to attack networks, how to break systems, and how to turn things off. I don't think it adds up as representing a defensive team.
Edward Snowden
#84. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed
Edward Snowden
#85. I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,
Edward Snowden
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. The work of a generation is beginning here, with your hearings, and you have the full measure of my gratitude and support.
Edward Snowden
#91. I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.
Edward Snowden
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. Our rights are not granted by governments," Snowden said. "They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.
Edward Snowden
#95. We believe Russian-American relations are broader and larger than emotions and mutual grudges, including the situation with the U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden.
Sergei Lavrov
#96. 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
#97. When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
Edward Snowden
#98. 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
#99. Snowden was horrified to discover that behind bars he would have no access to a computer.
Luke Harding
#100. Patriots don't go to Russia. They don't seek asylum in Cuba. They don't seek asylum in Venezuela. They fight their cause here. Edward Snowden is a coward. He is a traitor. And he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so.
John F. Kerry
