Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.
My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
We must remain mindful of the potential impact of over-correcting the authorizations of the intelligence community.
What you did do with your grocery card, discount card is much more invasive to your privacy than what the NSA does.
If Pakistan NSA wants to come he is welcome. But talks will only be on terrorism. No scope for expansion of agenda.
It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.
When I left NSA, it was with an understanding that you can never underestimate the power of large numbers of stupid people.
We've got the NSA getting logs of every call you make. The IRS is weaponized like Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
I wouldn't consider them acts of war, but I would consider them acts of property damage, commercial theft that are serious.
My own dream is that we discover that the NSA has been secretly keeping files on members of the National Rifle Association.
The Americans are and remain our best friends, but this is absolutely not right. We can't simply return to business as usual.
I worked for GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters, and is the equivalent of the NSA here in the U.S.
I was working at the NSA. I don't know, I was just bored. I just knew that's not what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
We no longer know whom to trust. This is the greatest damage the NSA has done to the Internet, and will be the hardest to fix.
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.
What is portrayed as high-minded positions on issues sometimes is just designed to carve out some of their commercial interests.
My relationship with Silicon Valley and the tech community historically has been really good. Many of these folks are my friends.
My well-discussed 'paranoia' urges me to believe that some tiny segment of the NSA's parsing algorithm is finely tuned to my voice.
The United States should give former NSA contractor Edward Snowden immunity from prosecution in exchange for congressional testimony.
Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.
The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.
The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet.[Barack] Obama has done nothing about that.
Once you're in a network, you can do a whole bunch of things to that network. It's just that NSA doesn't have the authority to do that.
The president assured the chancellor that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor.
Why did we not know that heads of state were being eavesdropped on, spied on? We are the intelligence committee and we didn't know that.
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.
We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans.
What I believe is that a lot of the NSA's telephone metadata program is the result of misinformation spread by a traitor, Edward Snowden.
The NSA is already bugging everything that everybody does. Each time there's a new revelation from Snowden, you realise the extent of it.
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
With respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States.
The NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year since Congress gave it broad new powers in 2008.
So I think it's important to understand that your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed about exactly what we're doing.
The president overstepped his authority when he asked the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls without obtaining a warrant.
The NSA is forbidden to 'target' American citizens, green-card holders or companies for surveillance without an individual warrant from a judge.
This is nothing new. It has proved meritorious because we have gathered significant information on bad guys and only on bad guys over the years.
Such technological tools ... are helping us now in the hot war against terrorists who would bomb this theater if they had the capacity to do so.
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.
These [NSA] programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.
What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.
The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.
It’s just simply the fact that the NSA does not think anybody should be able to communicate anywhere on the Earth without them being able to invade it.
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.
You've got the NSA doing all this collecting of material on all of its citizens - that's what the SS, the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, and the NKVD did.
Effective immediately, we will only pursue phone calls that are two steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization instead of three.
The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable.
There is an obligation both moral, but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security.
For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
I am scared that if you make the technology work better, you help the NSA misuse it more. I'd be more worried about that than about autonomous killer robots.
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.