Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, 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. "

Related Quotes:

" No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us. "

Edward Snowden

Think

Trust

People

" Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. "

" Perhaps I am naive, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents. "

" Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? "

" Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are. "

" They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from, and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we, as the public, trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives? "

" It's been vindicating to see the reaction from lawmakers, judges, public bodies around the world, civil liberties activists who have said it's true that we have a right to at least know the broad outlines of what our government's doing in our name and what it's doing against us. "

" Who I am really doesn't matter at all. If I'm the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies. "

" 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. "

" 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 very much about those values. "

" 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. "

" I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things... 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. "

" The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. 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. "

" There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency. "

" I have no regrets. "

Edward Snowden

Regrets

No Regrets

" You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk. "

" 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. "

" 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 would rather be without a state than without a voice. "

" The public interest is not always the same as the national interest. Going to war with people who are not our enemy in places that are not a threat doesn't make us safe, and that applies whether it's in Iraq or on the Internet. The Internet is not the enemy. Our economy is not the enemy. "

" 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. "

" Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows. "

" Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there's a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I'm no longer alone. "

" 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. "

" I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. "

" If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school. "

" Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law. And the key there is in terms of civil disobedience. You have to make sure that what you're risking, what you're bringing onto yourself, does not serve as a detriment to anyone else. It doesn't hurt anybody else. "

" The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together. "

" I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is. "

" 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? "