Edward Snowden Quotes

The power of the presidency is important, but it is not determinative.

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

[Brazil] went to the UN and said, "We need new standards for this." We need to take a look at what they're calling "data sovereignty."

I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance.

So many of the things we're told by the government simply aren't true.

There is a technical solution to every political problem...

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. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.

The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian?

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

We decentralise permissions over the use of our communications.

People say that [i'm a celebrity], but I've only had to sign autographs for "civ-libs" types. And I autograph court orders.

As for my personal politics, some people seem to think I'm some kind of archlibertarian, a hyper-conservative.

There are cyber threats out there, this is a dangerous world, and we have to be safe, we have to be secure no matter the cost.

It's much easier, I think, to protect communications while they're in transit at least, than it is to enforce legislation in every country in the world to say that you can't do this.

When we talk about the assertion of basically new government privileges with weak or no justification, we don't even have to look at international law to see the failings in them.

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

I'm not a movie guy. I don't know all this stuff that comes with celebrity. I don't know who the actors will be and stuff like that. But anybody who wants to talk about the issues - that's great.

How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?

I have a somewhat sneaky way of effecting political change.

We are all today being monitored in advance and in criminal suspicion. And I think that's terrifying, and deeply illiberal as concept. And that's something that we should reject.

The big tech companies understood that the government had not only damaged American principles, it had hurt their businesses.

I know that fundamentally, changes to the fabric of the internet, and sort of our methods of communication, can enforce our rights.

The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general.

I was living a charmed life.

We have to argue forcefully and demand that the government recognise that these programmes do not prevent - mass surveillance does not prevent acts of terrorism.

We have to call mass surveillance mass surveillance. We can't let governments around the world redefine, and sort of weasel their way out of it by saying this is bulk collection.

The FBI was creating a world where citizens rely on Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around.

This whole pre-criminal investigation, where we watch everybody, all the time, just in case, is really an extraordinary departure from the Western liberal tradition.

Nobody's going to vote for terrorism. So our governments don't have that sort of political pressure to act in a responsible manner when it comes to stewardship of our rights.

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

The work of a generation is beginning here, with your hearings, and you have the full measure of my gratitude and support.

The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.

You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If you sacrifice your values because you're afraid, you don't care about those values very much.

I have had no contact with the Chinese government ... I only work with journalists.

The 'music' is not an open court and a fair trial.

I can do more good outside of prison... This country is worth dying for.

I have no relationship with the Russian government at all.

I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law.

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

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.

The definition of a security state is one that prioritizes security over all other considerations.

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

We've learned that we've allowed technological capabilities to dictate policies and practices, rather than ensuring that our laws and values guide our technological capabilities.

I'm not a spy, which is the real question

Our founders did not write that 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.'

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.

So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading.

Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.

We have the means and we have the technology to end mass surveillance without any legislative action at all, without any policy changes.

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.