When it comes to political engagement, I'm not a politician - I'm an engineer.

I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

We do not live in a revolutionary time. People are not prepared to contest power.

We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism.

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.

The US government still has no idea what documents I have because encryption works

I love my country. I love my family. And I have dedicated my life to both of them.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government ... I only work with journalists.

I'm not a communist, a socialist or a radical. But these issues have to be addressed.

I describe myself as an indoor cat, because I'm a computer guy and I always have been.

I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.

I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose.

By putting these sort of lines around what ideas are proper or improper, we lose things.

Privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We're subjects, and we have rulers.

I'm ultimately satisfied that we know a little bit more about how the world really works.

Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.

I've got more than enough for my needs [for social life in Moscow], let's put it that way.

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

I'm familiar with Andrei Sakharov reputation, but I don't know his personal history at all.

Radicalism and extremism, while they are dangers, they exist in every society on some level.

When people say, "I have nothing to hide," what they're saying is, "My rights don't matter."

In America, we collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.

What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one's country.

[Occupy Wall Street] had an impact on consciousness. It was not effective in realizing change.

I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.

The rule of law doesn't mean the police are in charge, but that we all answer to the same laws.

We need to think about encryption not as this sort of arcane, black art. It's a basic protection.

You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk.

The definition of a security state is one that prioritizes security over all other considerations.

I must say I'm surprised by how skeptical of the [Barack] Obama administration The Nation has been.

They are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them.

I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.

It doesn't need to be consistently concentrated in these venture-capital funds and things like that.

I do agree that when it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.

When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

I read these polls because civil-liberties organizations tell me I need to be aware of public opinion.

The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general.

They [the authorities] will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night.

The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.

US has to be able to rely on a safe and interconnected internet in order to compete with other countries.

The only way I could be extradited is through the principle of what my lawyers call "politics trumps law."

We decentralise the ability to decide the level of publicity that's attached to any of our communications.

That's the beauty of the Internet is that we're no longer tied to our communities by physical connections.

What I wanted to do was give society the information it needed to decide if it wanted to change the system.

If we don't do anything, if we go along with the status quo, we are going to have a mass surveillance world.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian?

As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I'm some kind of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative.

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