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" 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. "

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" America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics. "

Edward Snowden

Power

Good

Freedom

" You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening. "

" 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. "

" Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded. "

" The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable. "

" If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home. "

Edward Snowden

If I Could

Home

" 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. "

" The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. "

Edward Snowden

Lists

Government

" 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. "

" 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. "

" After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism. "

" 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. "

" My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. "

" Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. "

" If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants. "

" It may be that by watching everywhere we go, by watching everything we do, by analyzing every word we say, by waiting and passing judgment over every association we make and every person we love, that we could uncover a terrorist plot, or we could discover more criminals. But is that the kind of society we want to live in? "

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

Edward Snowden

Lose

Earth

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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? "

" I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer. "

" 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 only time you can be completely free from risk is when you're in prison. "

" 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. "

" The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society. "