Edward Snowden Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

When you are in the position privileged access, like a system administrator, you are exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale then the average employee...

Edward Snowden
Scientists never make science: they simply find it. Every scientific thought they think has been thought for them in the book of nature and they simply rethink it.

Edward Snowden
I don't work with people. I don't recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I've done that at all levels from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top.

Edward Snowden
The government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.

Edward Snowden
I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.

Edward Snowden
I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.

Edward Snowden
Hi and Merry Christmas. I'm honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain's George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information.

Edward Snowden
Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

Edward Snowden
Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

Edward Snowden
If living unfreely but comfortably is something you're willing to accept—and I think many of us are, it's the human nature—you can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck for relatively little work, against the public interest, and go to sleep at night after watching your shows.

Edward Snowden
You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.

Edward Snowden
Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

Edward Snowden
There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.

Edward Snowden
The types of collection in the book -– microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us –- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.

Edward Snowden
When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects.

Edward Snowden
Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American

Edward Snowden
All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

Edward Snowden
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 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.

Edward Snowden
I do not want to live in a world where we have no privacy and no freedom, where the unique value of the Internet is snuffed out.

Edward Snowden
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.

Edward Snowden
The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.

Edward Snowden
A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

Edward Snowden
Abandoning open society for fear of terrorism is the only way to be defeated by it.

Edward Snowden
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