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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Edward Snowden

Spy

Why

Yourself

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

" We're losing our way as a society. If we don't stand up, if we don't say what we think those rights should be, and if we don't protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them. "

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

" 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. "

" My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. "

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

Edward Snowden

If I Could

Home

" I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. "

Edward Snowden

Change

Society

" 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. "

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

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

" It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

" I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression. "

" If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. "

" 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. "

" I have no regrets. "

Edward Snowden

Regrets

No Regrets

" 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. "