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" I think it's important to remember that people don't set their lives on fire. They don't walk away from their extraordinarily, extraordinarily comfortable lives ... for no reason. "

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" 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. "

Edward Snowden

Time

Awareness

Things

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

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

Edward Snowden

Lists

Government

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing? "

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

" 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. "

" If I had to describe myself, I wouldn't use words like 'hero.' I wouldn't use 'patriot,' and I wouldn't use 'traitor.' I'd say I'm an American and I'm a citizen, just like everyone else. "

" 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

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

" 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. "

" I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together. "

" I do not expect to see home again, though that is what I want. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

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

" 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. "