Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We have the means and we have the technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all, without any policy changes.
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.
Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?
Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.
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.
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
Do we want to emulate China in the way that China emulates the West? I think, for most Americans, the answer to that question would be no.
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.
There's a real danger in the way our representative government functions today. It functions properly only when paired with accountability.
Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.
Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
The sad truth is that societies that demand whistleblowers be martyrs often find themselves without either, and always when it matters the most.
You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.
These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.
A given order may at any given time fail to represent those values, even work against those values. I think that's the dynamic we're seeing today.
What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?
When you are in positions of privileged access... you see things that may be disturbing. Over time, that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up.
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.
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.
If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
US spend more on research and development than the other countries, so we shouldn't be making the internet a more hostile, a more aggressive territory.
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.
Increasingly we're seeing these ultra-partisan sites getting larger and larger readerships because people are self-selecting themselves into communities.
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.
The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable.
We have these traditional political parties that are less and less responsive to the needs of ordinary people, so people are in search of their own values.
I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich.
We are a representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through direct action. And that's enshrined in our Constitution and in our values.
What does that mean for a society, for a democracy, when the people that you elect on the basis of promises can basically suborn the will of the electorate?
You have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it's very likely not in your country. It's somewhere else in the world.
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.
Presidents should not be exempted from the same standards of reason and evidence and justification that any other citizen or civil movement should be held to.
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.
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.
I'm saying we need to be aware of it, and we need to be able to distinguish when political developments are occurring that are contrary to the public interest.
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.
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.
How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?
We have to argue forcefully and demand that the government recognise that these programmes do not prevent - mass surveillance does not prevent acts of terrorism.
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.
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.
I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.
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.
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.
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.
We should know at least the broad strokes of the powers that the government's claiming in our name, and using allegedly, on our behalf. And also against us as well.
This whole pre-criminal investigation, where we watch everybody, all the time, just in case, is really an extraordinary departure from the Western liberal tradition.
[Barton ] Gellman printed a great anecdote: he showed two Google engineers a slide that showed how the NSA was doing this, and the engineers "exploded in profanity."