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All This Is A Blessing And A Curse. It's A Blessing Because It Helps People Establish What They Value; They Understand The Sort Of Ideas They Identify With. The Curse Is That They Aren't Challenged In Their Views. The Internet Becomes An Echo Chamber. Users Don't See The Counterarguments.

-Edward Snowden

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All This Is A

Edward Snowden

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All This Is A Blessing And A Curse. It's A Blessing Because It Helps People Establish What They Value; They Understand The Sort Of Ideas They Identify With. The Curse Is That They Aren't Challenged In Their Views. The Internet Becomes An Echo Chamber. Users Don't See The Counterarguments.

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More From Edward Snowden

And That's Not Something I'm Willing To Support, It's Not Something I'm Willing To Build And It's Not Something I'm Willing To Live Under.

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.

If The Government Or The Parties Won't Address Our Needs, We Will. It's About Direct Action, Even Civil Disobedience.

By Creating A Self-policing, Self-reporting, Sort Of Self-monitoring Culture Through Law, Through Statute, And Imposing That On The Academic World, I Think Not Only Are We Losing A Significant Measure Of Freedom In Academic Traditions And In Our Civil Society, But We're Actually Making Ourselves Less Competitive With Every Other Country Around The World That Does Not Do That. Because That's Where Researchers Are Going To Go And That's Where Academics Are Going To Go. And Ultimately, That's Where Breakthroughs Are Going To Occur.

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

We've Already Seen, In Practically Every Country Around The World Where These Issues Have Been Covered, That The General Public Has Recoiled At The Ideology Behind These Programs.

It's Critical How We Want To Use These Spy Programs, These Electronic Capabilities, Where We Want To Draw The Line, And Who Should Approve These Programs, These Decisions, And At What Level, For Engaging In Operations That Could Lead Us As A Nation Into A War.

It Also Comes Down To Parenting. It Is Important To Know What Your Beliefs Are, And That You Have To Stand Up For Them Or You Don't Really Believe In Them. You Know, My Father And Mother - In Fact, Every Member Of My Immediate Family - Have Worked For The Federal Government. Sometimes Misunderstood Is That I Didn't Stand Up To Overthrow The System.

The Government Would Assert That Individuals Who Are Aware Of Serious Wrongdoing In The Intelligence Community Should Bring Their Concerns To The People Most Responsible For That Wrongdoing, And Rely On Those People To Correct The Problems That Those People Themselves Authorized.

There Is A Technical Solution To Every Political Problem...

It Is Afraid Of An Informed, Angry Public Demanding The Constitutional Government It Was Promised - And It Should Be.

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.

Arguing That You Don't Care About 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.

The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

Microsoft Is In A Court Battle With The Department Of Justice. The Doj Is Saying, "we Want Information From Your Data Center In Ireland. It's Not About A Us Citizen, But We Want It." Microsoft Said, "ok, Fine. Go To A Judge In Ireland. Ask Them For A Warrant. We Have A Mutual Legal-assistance Treaty. They'll Do It. Give That To Us, And We'll Provide The Information To You In Accordance With Irish Laws."

Ever Since I've Been Here [in Russia], My Life Has Been Consumed With Work That's Actually Fulfilling And Satisfying.

The [barack] Obama Administration Almost Appears As Though It Is Afraid Of The Intelligence Community. They're Afraid Of Death By A Thousand Cuts - You Know, Leaks And Things Like That.

Chelsea Manning Got Thirty-five Years In Prison, While I'm Still Free.

Until We Reform Our Laws And Until We Fix The Excesses Of These Old Policies That We Inherited In The Post-9/11 Era, We're Not Going To Be Able To Put The Security Back In The Nsa.

They [the Authorities] Will Act Aggressively Against Anyone Who Has Known Me. That Keeps Me Up At Night.

The Nsa And Israel Wrote Stuxnet Together.

The Power Of The Presidency Is Important, But It Is Not Determinative.

Since The Revelations, We Have Seen A Massive Sea Change In The Technological Basis And Makeup Of The Internet.

I Would Rather Be Without A State Than Without A Voice.

As For My Personal Politics, Some People Seem To Think I'm Some Kind Of Archlibertarian, A Hyper-conservative.

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.

You Have Ceded The Concept Of Your Own Rights. You've Converted Them Into Something You Get As A Revocable Privilege From The Government, Something That Can Be Abrogated At Its Convenience. And That Has Diminished The Measure Of Liberty Within A Society.

I Think The Public Still Isn't Aware Of The Frequency With Which The Cyber-attacks, As They're Being Called In The Press, Are Being Used By Governments Around The World, Not Just The Us.

What We Need To Do Is We Need To Create New International Standards Of Behavior - Not Just National Laws, Because This Is A Global Problem. We Can't Just Fix It In The United States, Because There Are Other Countries That Don't Follow U.s. Laws. We Have To Create International Standards That Say That Cyber Attacks Should Only Ever Occur When It Is Absolutely Necessary.

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.

If We Can't Have An Open And Honest Debate About The Value Of Ideas In A University In Glasgow, Or Boston, Or Anywhere Else In The World, Then Where Are They Going To Go?

My Government Revoked My Passport Intentionally To Leave Me Exiled. If They Really Wanted To Capture Me, They Would've Allowed Me To Travel To Latin America, Because The Cia Can Operate With Impunity Down There. They Did Not Want That; They Chose To Keep Me In Russia.

The Big Tech Companies Understood That The Government Had Not Only Damaged American Principles, It Had Hurt Their Businesses.

We've Got Crazy Little Sites Going Up Against Established Media Behemoths.

When I Talk About The Polling, I'm Talking About The Principles. It Shows These Officials Are Knowingly Attempting To Shift Public Opinion, Even Though They Know What They Say Is Not Factual.

You Are Not Even Aware Of What Is Possible. The Extent Of Their Capabilities Is Horrifying. We Can Plant Bugs In Machines. Once You Go On The Network, I Can Identify Your Machine. You Will Never Be Safe Whatever Protections You Put In Place.

When I Was Working In Japan, I Created A System For Ensuring That Intelligence Data Was Globally Recoverable In The Event Of A Disaster. I Was Not Aware Of The Scope Of Mass Surveillance. I Came Across Some Legal Questions When I Was Creating It. My Superiors Pushed Back And Were Like, "well, How Are We Going To Deal With This Data?" And I Was Like, "i Didn't Even Know It Existed."

The Nsa Routinely Lies In Response To Congressional Inquiries About The Scope Of Surveillance In America.

Citizens With A Conscience Are Not Going To Ignore Wrong-doing Simply Because They'll Be Destroyed For It: The Conscience Forbids It.

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

We Have To Confront The Reality Of Our World, And Make The Hard Decisions About Which Way We Want To Move Forward.

We Have Got A Cia Station Just Up The Road – The Consulate Here In Hong Kong – And I Am Sure They Are Going To Be Busy For The Next Week. And That Is A Concern I Will Live With For The Rest Of My Life, However Long That Happens To Be.

Government Spying

There Is A Policy Response That Needs To Occur. There Is Also A Technical Response That Needs To Occur. It Is The Development Community That Can Really Craft The Solutions And Make Sure We Are Safe.

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.

We're Now More Than A Year Since My Nsa Revelations, And Despite Numerous Hours Of Testimony Before Congress, Despite Tons Of Off-the-record Quotes From Anonymous Officials Who Have An Ax To Grind, Not A Single Us Official, Not A Single Representative Of The United States Government, Has Ever Pointed To A Single Case Of Individualized Harm Caused By These Revelations. This, Despite The Fact That Former Nsa Director Keith Alexander Said This Would Cause Grave And Irrevocable Harm To The Nation.

We Have A Media That Goes Along With The Government By Parroting Phrases Intended To Provoke A Certain Emotional Response - For Example, "national Security." Everyone Says "national Security" To The Point That We Now Must Use The Term "national Security." But It Is Not National Security That They're Concerned With; It Is State Security. And That's A Key Distinction.

A Given Order May At Any Given Time Fail To Represent Those Values, Even Work Against Those Values. I Think That's The Dynamic We're Seeing Today.

Privacy Matters; Privacy Is What Allows Us To Determine Who We Are And Who We Want To Be.

The Question That We, As A Society, Have To Ask Is, Are Our Collective Rights Worth A Small Relative Advantage In Our Ability To Spy On Other Countries And Foreign Citizens? I Have My Opinion About That, But We All Collectively Have To Come To Our Opinion About It.

To Do That They, The Nsa Specifically, Targets The Communications Of Everyone. It Ingests Them By Default. It Collects Them In Its System And It Filters Them And It Analyses Them And It Measures Them And It Stores Them For Periods Of Time Simply Because That's The Easiest, Most Efficient, And Most Valuable Way To Achieve These Ends. So While They May Be Intending To Target Someone Associated With A Foreign Government Or Someone They Suspect Of Terrorism, They're Collecting You're Communications To Do So.

We Have To Be Able To Reject Disproportionate And Unjustified Responses In The Cyber Domain Just As We Do In The Physical Domain.

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.

In The United States The White House Has Appointed Two Different Independent Panels Who Had Full Access To Classified Information For The Last 10 Years That Master Balance Has Been In Place In The United States, And They Found That Despite Intercepting The Calls - Everybody In The Country, - It Had Never Stopped A Single Terrorist Attack. So The Question Is, Why Would These Officials Be Pursuing These Policies, If We Know They Don't Work, If They Don't Stop Terrorism?

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.

Dangerous World

[occupy Wall Street] Had An Impact On Consciousness. It Was Not Effective In Realizing Change.

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.

The Issue Is We're Losing Leverage. Governments Are Increasingly Getting More Power And We Are Increasingly Losing Our Ability To Control That Power, And Even To Be Aware Of That Power.

I Wasn't Trying To Change The Laws Or Slow Down The Machine. Maybe I Should Have. My Critics Say That I Was Not Revolutionary Enough. But They Forget That I Am A Product Of The System. I Worked Those Desks, I Know Those People And I Still Have Some Faith In Them, That The Services Can Be Reformed.

I Understand That I Will Be Made To Suffer For My Actions, And That The Return Of This Information To The Public Marks My End.

Government Spying

You Don't Need To Justify Your Rights As A Citizen - That Inverts The Model Of Responsibility. The Government Must Justify Its Intrusion Into Your Rights. If You Stop Defending Your Rights By Saying, "i Don't Need Them In This Context" Or "i Can't Understand This," They Are No Longer Rights.

Every Time We Walk On To The Field Of Battle And The Field Of Battle Is The Internet, It Doesn't Matter If We Shoot Our Opponents A Hundred Times And Hit Every Time. As Long As They've Hit Us Once, We've Lost, Because The U.s. Is So Much More Reliant On Those Systems.

We Hack Everyone Everywhere. We Like To Make A Distinction Between Us And The Others. But We Are In Almost Every Country In The World. We Are Not At War With These Countries.

The Government Doesn't Want Us To Know What They're Doing, How They're Interpreting The Law, How They're Interpreting And Redefining Their Powers, And Increasingly, How They're Redefining The Boundaries Of Our Rights And Our Liberties, Broadly, Socially, And Categorically Without Our Involvement.

If I Defected At All, I Defected From The Government To The Public

We Need The Security Standards To Apply To The Internet. We Need To Be Able To Trust That When We Send Our Emails Through Verizon, That Verizon Isn't Sharing With The Nsa, That Verizon Isn't Sharing Them With The Fbi Or German Intelligence Or French Intelligence Or Russian Intelligence Or Chinese Intelligence.

The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

Consent Of The Governed

I Built My Own Studio. I Don't Have The Professional Language To Describe It Because I'm Not A Videographer - But I'm A Technician. So I Get The Camera, I Get All The Things That Translate The Camera To The Computer, I Set Up A Live Session, I Do The Security On It, I Set Up A Background So I Can Key It Out, Like Newscasters Do, And Replace It With Whatever I Want - And I Can Be Anywhere I Need To Be.

I'm Not A Spy For Russia Or China Or Any Other Country For That Matter.

The Public Don't Want To Authorize The Internet To Become A Battleground. We Need To Do Everything We Can As A Society To Keep That A Neutral Zone, To Keep That An Economic Zone That Can Reflect Our Values, Both Politically, Socially, And Economically.

We Should Never Allow Computers To Make Inherently Governmental Decisions In Terms Of The Application Of Military Force, Even If That's Happening On The Internet.

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.

What Has A Great Value To Us As A Nation Is The Internet Itself. The Internet Is Critical Infrastructure To The United States. We Use The Internet For Every Communication That Businesses Rely On Every Day.

Hong Kong Has A Reputation For Freedom In Spite Of The People's Republic Of China. It Has A Strong Tradition Of Free Speech.

Much Of What I Saw In Geneva Really Disillusioned Me About How My Government Functions And What Its Impact Is In The World. I Realised That I Was Part Of Something That Was Doing Far More Harm Than Good.

The Authoritarian One Believed That An Individual's Rights Were Basically Provided By Governments And Were Determined By States. The Other Society - Ours - Tended To Believe That A Large Portion Of Our Rights Were Inherent And Couldn't Be Abrogated By Governments, Even If This Seemed Necessary.

The Surveillance Revelations Are Critically Important Because They Revealed That Our Rights Are Being Redefined In Secret, By Secret Courts That Were Never Intended To Have That Role - Without The Consent Of The Public, Without Even The Awareness Of The Majority Of Our Political Representatives.

On The Other Hand, The Internet Is There To Fill Needs That People Have For Information And Socialization. We Get This Sort Of Identification Thing Going On Nowadays Because It's A Very Fractious Time. We Live In A Time Of Troubles.

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.

I’m Neither Traitor Nor Hero. I’m An American.

I'm Not An Anarchist. I'm Not Saying, "burn It To The Ground."

In The United States And Some Of The Other Countries Involved It's Sort Of A "five Eyes" Global Spying Alliance. That's The Us, Uk, Canada, New Zealand, And Australia. They've Had A Little Bit Of A More Muscular Public Response. Now, They Haven't Been Satisfying Or Really Meaningful In Any Country Yet. But They Have Been Engaging.

My Sole Motive Is To Inform The Public As To That Which Is Done In Their Name And That Which Is Done Against Them.

Presidents Should Not Be Exempted From The Same Standards Of Reason And Evidence And Justification That Any Other Citizen Or Civil Movement Should Be Held To.

I Went To St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg Is Awesome.

If The United States Is Promoting The Development Of Exploits, Of Vulnerabilities, Of Insecurity In This Critical Infrastructure, And We're Not Fixing It When We Find It, Instead We Put It On The Shelf So We Can Use It The Next Time We Want To Launch An Attack Against Some Foreign Country. We're Leaving Ourselves At Risk.

When You're Attacking A Router On The Internet, And You're Doing It Remotely, It's Like Trying To Shoot The Moon With A Rifle. Everything Has To Happen Exactly Right. Every Single Variable Has To Be Controlled And Precisely Accounted For. And That's Not Possible To Do When You Have Limited Knowledge Of The Target You're Attacking.

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.

I Think We're Going To See A Move Away From That, Because Young People - Digital Natives Who Spend Their Life On The Internet - Get Saturated. It's Like A Fashion Trend, And Becomes A Sign Of A Lack Of Sophistication.

Us Spend More On Research And Development Than The Other Countries, So We Shouldn't Be Making The Internet A More Hostile, A More Aggressive Territory.

Research And Development

If A Single Russian Source Would Come Forward, He Would Be In Hot Water. And In The United States, What I Did Appearing At That [vladimir] Putin Press Conference Was Not Worth The Price.

When The Lights Go Out At A Power Plant Sometime In The Future, We're Going To Know That That's A Consequence Of Deprioritizing Defense For The Sake Of An Advantage In Terms Of Offense.

In Liberal Societies We Don't Typically Require Citizens To Rearrange Their Activities, Their Lives, The Way They Go About Their Business, To Make It Easy For The Police To Do Their Work.

Sometimes That Irrational Commitment To Principle Is What Society Needs To Survive. Whenever You Talk About Radicalism, Whenever You Talk About Activism, Whenever You Talk About Progressive Activity, That Sort Of Moves The Measure Of Liberty In Human Society Forward, Makes Us All Enjoy A Better Standard Of Liberty, It Typically Starts Out Criminal. It Typically Starts Out A Little Bit Shaky, And Rather Radical. And That's Irrational To Put Yourself Up To Do That.

I Don't Think Political Reform Is Likely To Succeed. [senators Tom] Udall And [ron] Wyden, On The Intelligence Committee, Have Been Sounding The Alarm, But They Are A Minority.

I Have Had No Contact With The Chinese Government ... I Only Work With Journalists.

Americans Hack Everyone Everywhere. We Like To Make A Distinction Between Us And The Others. But We Are In Almost Every Country In The World. We Are Not At War With These Countries.

I Hope You Have Read The Election Programme Of The Labour Party...this Is Not Socialism. It Is Bolshevism Run Mad.

These Activities Can Be Misconstrued, Misinterpreted, And Used To Harm You As An Individual Even Without The Government Having Any Intent To Do You Wrong.

Ultimately, If People Lose Their Willingness To Recognize That There Are Times In Our History When Legality Becomes Distinct From Morality, We Aren't Just Ceding Control Of Our Rights To The Government, But Our Futures.

From The Very Beginning, I Said There Are Two Tracks Of Reform: There's The Political And The Technical. I Don't Believe The Political Will Be Successful, For Exactly The Reasons You Underlined. The Issue Is Too Abstract For Average People, Who Have Too Many Things Going On In Their Lives.

I Had Been Looking For Leaders, But I Realized That Leadership Is About Being The First To Act.

Government Spying

The True Measurement Of A Person's Worth Isn't What They Say They Believe In, But What They Do In Defense Of Those Beliefs. If You're Not Acting On Your Beliefs, Then They Probably Aren't Real.

People In Both Parties From The Congressional Intelligence Committees - All These Co-opted Officials Who Play Cheerleader For Spy Agencies - Go On These Sunday Shows And They Say: "snowden Was A Traitor. He Works Against Americans. He Works For The Chinese. Oh, Wait, He Left Hong Kong - He Works For The Russians."

Every Time Somebody On The Internet Sort Of Glances At Us Sideways, We Launch An Attack At Them. That's Not Going To Work Out For Us Long Term, And The U.s. Have To Get Ahead Of The Problem If We're Going To Succeed.

Even If It Were, You Run Into The Same Problem With International Commerce: If You Create A Device That Is Famous For Compromised Security And It Has An American Back Door, Nobody Is Gonna Buy It.

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

There's A Real Danger In The Way Our Representative Government Functions Today. It Functions Properly Only When Paired With Accountability.

People Have To Be Free To Investigate Computer Security. People Have To Be Free To Look For The Vulnerabilities And Create Proof Of Concept Code To Show That They Are True Vulnerabilities In Order For Us To Secure Our Systems.

Internet Exchanges And Internet Service Providers - International Fiber Optic Landing Points - These Are The Key Tools That Governments Go After In Order To Enable Their Programs Of Mass Surveillance. If They Want To Be Able To Watch The Entire Population Of A Country Instead Of A Single Individual, You Have To Go After Those Bulk Interchanges.

I Don't Want The Stage. I'm Terrified Of Giving These Talking Heads Some Distraction, Some Excuse To Jeopardize, Smear, And Delegitimize A Very Important Movement.

I Don't Think It Is The Most Important Thing. I Think It Is The Fact That The Director Of National Intelligence Gave A False Statement To Congress Under Oath, Which Is A Felony. If We Allow Our Officials To Knowingly Break The Law Publicly And Face No Consequences, We're Instituting A Culture Of Immunity, And This Is What I Think Historically Will Actually Be Considered The Biggest Disappointment Of The [barack] Obama Administration.

We Can't Simply Scare People Into Giving Up Their Rights, On The Basis, Oh, This Protects Us From Terrorism.

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.

When We Look At The Full-on Mass Surveillance Watching Everyone In The Country, In The United States, It Doesn't Work. It Didn't Stop The Attacks In Boston. The Marathon Bombings. Where Again, We Knew Who These Individuals Were. It Didn't Stop The Underwear Bomber, Whose Father Walked Into An Embassy And Warned Us About This Individual Before He Walked Onto An Airplane. And It's Not Going To Stop The Next Attacks Either. Because Again, They're Not Public Safety Programmes. They're Spying Programmes. They Are Valuable For Spying.

When We Talk About Computer Network Exploitation, Computer Network Attack, We're Not Just Talking About Your Home Pc. We're Talking About Your Cell Phone, And We're Also Talking About Internet Routers Themselves. The Nsa Is Attacking The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet To Try To Take Ownership Of It. They Hack The Routers That Connect Nations To The Internet Itself.

We Do Not Live In A Revolutionary Time. People Are Not Prepared To Contest Power.

The [george W.] Bush Administration Marked A Very Serious And Profoundly Negative Turning Point - Not Just For The Nation, But For The International Order, Because We Started To Govern On The Idea Of "might Makes Right." And That's A Very Old, Toxic And Infectious Idea.

Imagine, If You Will, You're Sitting At My Desk In Hawaii. You Have Access To The Entire World, As Far As You Can See It. Last Several Days, Content Of Internet Communications. Every Email That's Sent. Every Website That's Visited By Every Individual. Every Text Message That Somebody Sends On Their Phone. Every Phone Call They Make.

What The Nsa Really Wants Is The Capability Of Retrospective Investigation. They Want To Have A Perfect Record Of The Last Five Years Of Your Life, So When You Come To Their Attention, They Can Know Everything About You. I'm Not Down With That, But [bill] Binney Was Trying To Create Something Like That.

Too Often We Forget That Social And Political Movements Don't Happen Overnight. They Don't Bring Change Immediately - You Have To Build A Critical Mass Of Understanding Of The Issues.

Russia Recently Passed A Law - I Think A Terrible Law - Which Says You Have To Store All Of The Data From Russian Citizens On Russian Soil Just To Prevent Other Countries From Playing The Same Kind Of Legal Games We're Playing In This Microsoft Case.

I Know That Fundamentally, Changes To The Fabric Of The Internet, And Sort Of Our Methods Of Communication, Can Enforce Our Rights.

I'm Just Another Guy Who Sits There Day To Day In The Office, Watching What's Happening, And Goes, 'this Is Something That's Not Our Place To Decide.' The Public Needs To Decide Whether These Programs Or Policies Are Right Or Wrong.

I'm Familiar With Andrei Sakharov Reputation, But I Don't Know His Personal History At All.

Personal History

Custom Developed Digital Weapons, Cyber Weapons Nowadays Typically Chain Together A Number Of Zero-day Exploits That Are Targeted Against The Specific Site, The Specific Target That They Want To Hit. But It Depends, This Level Of Sophistication, On The Budget And The Quality Of The Actor Who's Instigating The Attack. If It's A Country That's Less Poor Or Less Sophisticated, It'll Be A Less Sophisticated Attack.

What Is Right Is Not Always The Same As What Is Legal

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.

The New Iphone Encryption Does Not Stop Them From Accessing Copies Of Your Pictures Or Whatever That Are Uploaded To, For Example, Apple's Cloud Service, Which Are Still Legally Accessible Because Those Are Not Encrypted. It Only Protects What's Physically On The Phone.

There Are Unquestionable Violations Of Our Constitution.

I Talk To Cryptographers, Some Of The Leading Technologists In The World, All The Time About How We Can Deal With These Issues. It Is Not Possible To Create A Back Door That Is Only Accessible, For Example, To The Fbi.

I Know The Media Likes To Personalize Political Debates, And I Know The Government Will Demonize Me.

We Have The Right Of Revolution. Revolution Does Not Always Have To Be Weapons And Warfare; It's Also About Revolutionary Ideas.

When It Comes To Cyber Conflicts Between, Say, America And China Or Even A Middle Eastern Nation, An African Nation, A Latin American Nation, A European Nation, We Have More To Lose.

The Reality Is If We Sit Back And Allow A Few Officials Behind Closed Doors To Launch Offensive Attacks Without Any Oversight Against Foreign Nations, Against People We Don't Like, Against Political Groups, Radicals, And Extremists Whose Ideas We May Not Agree With, And Could Be Repulsive Or Even Violent - If We Let That Happen Without Public Buy-in, We Won't Have Any Seat At The Table Of Government To Decide Whether Or Not It's Appropriate For These Officials To Drag Us Into Some Kind Of War Activity That We Don't Want, But We Weren't Aware Of At The Time.

We Decentralise Permissions Over The Use Of Our Communications.

As A General Rule, So Long As You Have Any Choice At All, You Should Never Route Through Or Peer With The Uk Under Any Circumstances. Their Fibers Are Radioactive, And Even The Queen's Selfies To The Pool Boy Get Logged.

We Need To Think About Encryption Not As This Sort Of Arcane, Black Art. It's A Basic Protection.

We Reject Techniques Like Torture Regardless Of Whether They're Effective Or Ineffective Because They Are Barbaric And Harmful On A Broad Scale. It's The Same Thing With Cyber Warfare. We Should Never Be Attacking Hospitals. We Should Never Be Taking Down Power Plants Unless That Is Absolutely Necessary To Ensure Our Continued Existence As A Free People.

The Great Fear That I Have Regarding The Outcome For America Of These Disclosures Is That Nothing Will Change. [people] Won't Be Willing To Take The Risks Necessary To Stand Up And Fight To Change Things And In The Months Ahead, The Years Ahead, It's Only Going To Get Worse. [the Nsa Will] Say That Because Of The Crisis, The Dangers That We Face In The World, Some New And Unpredicted Threat, We Need More Authority, We Need More Power, And There Will Be Nothing The People Can Do At That Point To Oppose It. And It Will Be Turnkey Tyranny.

What We're Seeing Now, Or Starting To See, Is An Atomization Of The Internet Community. Before, Everybody Went Only To A Few Sites; Now We've Got All These Boutiques.

[sovereignty] Would Break The American Monopoly, But It Would Also Break Internet Business, Because You'd Have To Have A Data Center In Every Country. And Data Centers Are Tremendously Expensive, A Big Capital Investment.

Internet Business

[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."

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.

You Are Also Asked To Take An Oath, And That's The Oath Of Service. The Oath Of Service Is Not To Secrecy, But To The Constitution - To Protect It Against All Enemies, Foreign And Domestic. That's The Oath That I Kept, That James Clapper And Former Nsa Director Keith Alexander Did Not. You Raise Your Hand And You Take The Oath In Your Class When You Are On Board. All Government Officials Are Made To Do It Who Work For The Intelligence Agencies - At Least, That's Where I Took The Oath.

When Governments Go Too Far To Punish People For Actions That Are Dissent Rather Than A Real Threat To The Nation, They Risk Delegitimizing Not Just Their Systems Of Justice, But The Legitimacy Of The Government Itself. Because When They Bring Political Charges Against People For Acts That Were Clearly At Least Intended To Work In The Public Interest, They Deny Them The Opportunity To Mount A Public-interest Defense.

Governments Cannot Require Individuals, They Cannot Require The Public As A Body, And They Cannot Require Corporations To Make Investigation And Law Enforcement Easy For Them In A Liberal Society.

The Most Important Thing To The United States Is Not Being Able To Attack Our Adversaries, The Most Important Thing Is To Be Able To Defend Ourselves. And We Can't Do That As Long As We're Subverting Our Own Security Standards For The Sake Of Surveillance.

When It Comes To The Internet, When It Comes To The United States' Technical Economy, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth.

We Don't Have A Great Clash Of Civilizations, A Clash Of Ideologies, A Clash Of Alternative Models, Where Governments Thought To Themselves, If We Go Too Far, If We Sort Of Trample Unreasonably On Rights, We'll Give Birth To A Political Movement Which Will Cost Us Our Credibility, And Will Possibly Cost Us Our Offices, Because People Will Vote For The Other Team, The Other Guys.

When You Say, ‘i Have Nothing To Hide,’ You’re Saying, ‘i Don’t Care About This Right.’ You’re Saying, ‘i Don’t Have This Right, Because I’ve Got To The Point Where I Have To Justify It.’ The Way Rights Work Is, The Government Has To Justify Its Intrusion Into Your Rights.

I'm Not A Politician, And I Do Not Think I Am As Effective In This Way As People Who Actually Prepare For It - Is To Focus On Technical Reform, Because I Speak The Language Of Technology. I Spoke With Tim Berners-lee, The Guy Who Invented The World Wide Web. We Agree On The Necessity For This Generation To Create What He Calls The Magna Carta For The Internet. We Want To Say What "digital Rights" Should Be. What Values Should We Be Protecting, And How Do We Assert Them.

We Are A Representative Democracy. But How Did We Get There? We Got There Through Direct Action. And That's Enshrined In Our Constitution And In Our Values.

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.

I Would Argue That Security And Liberty, Security And Privacy Are Not Actually Opposing. The Only Place Those Can Be Oppositional Is In The Realm Of Rhetoric But Not Fact.

Even If You're Not Doing Anything Wrong, You Are Being Watched And Recorded.

Government Spying

Lawyers From The Nsa, As Well As The Uk's Gchq, Work Very Hard To Search For Loopholes In Laws And Constitutional Protections That They Can Use To Justify Indiscriminate, Dragnet Surveillance Operations That Were At Best Unwittingly Authorized By Lawmakers.

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.

It's Becoming Less And Less The National Security Agency And More And More The National Surveillance Agency. It's Gaining More Offensive Powers With Each Passing Year.

So Many Of The Things We're Told By The Government Simply Aren't True.

It's Much More Important For U.s. To Be Able To Defend Against Foreign Attacks Than It Is To Be Able To Launch Successful Attacks Against Foreign Adversaries.

I Will Be Satisfied If The Federation Of Secret Law, Unequal Pardon And Irresistible Executive Powers That Rule The World That I Love Are Revealed Even For An Instant.

Government Spying

Your Rights Matter, Because You Never Know When You're Going To Need Them.

Do You Check It When You Travel, Do You Check It When You're Just At Home? They'd Be Able To Tell Something Called Your 'pattern Of Life.' When Are You Doing These Kind Of Activities? When Do You Wake Up? When Do You Go To Sleep? What Other Phones Are Around You When You Wake Up And Go To Sleep? Are You With Someone Who's Not Your Wife?

There Are Proxies, Proxy Servers On The Internet, And This Is Very Typical For Hackers To Use. They Create What Are Called Proxy Chains Where They Gain Access To A Number Of Different Systems Around The World, Sometimes By Hacking These, And They Use Them As Sort Of Relay Boxes.

We Watch Our Own People More Closely Than Anyone Else In The World.

There Are Programs Such As The Nsa Paying Rsa $10 Million To Use An Insecure Encryption Standard By Default In Their Products. That's Making Us More Vulnerable Not Just To The Snooping Of Our Domestic Agencies, But Also Foreign Agencies.

I've Talked To A Lot Of Pretty Good Lawyers Around The World. I'm Non-extraditable. That's The Real Reason The Us Government Was Pissed Off, Even When I Was Initially In Hong Kong.

Under Observation, We Act Less Free, Which Means We Effectively Are Less Free.

Everyone Everywhere Now Understands How Bad Things Have Gotten — And They’re Talking About It. They Have The Power To Decide For Themselves Whether They Are Willing To Sacrifice Their Privacy To The Surveillance State.

Surveillance State

I Describe Myself As An Indoor Cat, Because I'm A Computer Guy And I Always Have Been.

It's Interesting That You Mention [andrei] Sakharov's Creative Axis - He Had Produced Something For The Government That He Then Realized Was Something Other Than He Intended. That's Something [nsa Whistleblower] Bill Binney And I Share.

When Clapper Raised His Hand And Lied To The American Public, Was Anyone Tried? Were Any Charges Brought? Within 24 Hours Of Going Public, I Had Three Charges Against Me.

I Hate These Questions - I Don't Like Talking About This Stuff [popular Culture], Because It's So... To Me, It's So Ordinary.

You Have To Remember The Way The Internet Works, When You Communicate With The Server, It's Very Likely Not In Your Country. It's Somewhere Else In The World.

That's The Key - To Maintain The Garden Of Liberty, Right? This Is A Generational Thing That We Must All Do Continuously. We Only Have The Rights That We Protect. It Doesn't Matter What We Say Or Think We Have. It's Not Enough To Believe In Something; It Matters What We Actually Defend.

I Acted On My Belief That The Nsa's Mass Surveillance Programs Would Not Withstand A Constitutional Challenge, And That The American Public Deserved A Chance To See These Issues Determined By Open Courts. Today, A Secret Program Authorized By A Secret Court Was, When Exposed To The Light Of Day, Found To Violate Americans' Rights. It Is The First Of Many.

My Case Clearly Demonstrates The Need For Comprehensive Whistleblower Protection Act Reform. If We Had Had A Real Process In Place, And Reports Of Wrongdoing Could Be Taken To Real, Independent Arbiters Rather Than Captured Officials, I Might Not Have Had To Sacrifice So Much To Do What At This Point Even The President Seems To Agree Needed To Be Done.

The Only Way I Could Be Extradited Is Through The Principle Of What My Lawyers Call "politics Trumps Law."

The Question Is: Particularly In The Post-9/11 Era, Are Societies Becoming More Liberal Or More Authoritarian?

As A Technologist, I See The Trends, And I See That Automation Inevitably Is Going To Mean Fewer And Fewer Jobs. And If We Do Not Find A Way To Provide A Basic Income For People Who Have No Work, Or No Meaningful Work, We’re Going To Have Social Unrest That Could Get People Killed. When We Have Increasing Production - Year After Year After Year - Some Of That Needs To Be Reinvested In Society.

We Need To Make Sure That Whenever We're Engaging In A Cyber-warfare Campaign, A Cyber-espionage Campaign In The United States, That We Understand The Word Cyber Is Used As A Euphemism For The Internet, Because The American Public Would Not Be Excited To Hear That We're Doing Internet Warfare Campaigns, Internet Espionage Campaigns, Because We Realize That We Ourselves Are Impacted By It.

I Don't Want To Hide. If I Get Arrested, I Get Arrested.

I Do Everything On The Computer. Tv Is Obsolete Technology For Me.

We Have The Means And We Have The Technology To End Mass Surveillance Without Any Legislative Action At All, Without Any Policy Changes.

I Don't Want To Directly Confront Great Powers, Which We Cannot Defeat On Their Terms. They Have More Money, More Clout, More Airtime. We Cannot Be Effective Without A Mass Movement, And The American People Today Are Too Comfortable To Adapt To A Mass Movement.

[i Watch] All That Stuff - Game Of Thrones And All The Other Series. How About House Of Cards? As For Boardwalk Empire - That's Another Period Of Government Overreach, But At Least They Use The Amendment Process! In Real Life, The Executive Branch, By Violating The Constitution, Is Using Statutes In Place Of Constitutional Amendments To Diminish Our Liberty.

One Journalist Said That Everybody In Russia Is Miserable. Russia Is A Terrible Place. And I'm Going To End Up Miserable And I'm Going To Be A Drunk And I'm Never Going To Do Anything. I Don't Drink. I've Never Been Drunk In My Life. And They Talk About Russia Like It's The Worst Place On Earth. Russia's Great.

The Internet Is Shared Critical Infrastructure For Everyone On Earth. It's Not Supposed To Be A Domain Of Warfare. We're Not Supposed To Be Putting The Unied States' Economy On The Frontlines In The Battleground.

When Laura Poitras Asked Me If She Could Film Our Encounters, I Was Extremely Reluctant. I’m Grateful That I Allowed Her To Persuade Me. The Result Is A Brave And Brilliant Film That Deserves The Honor And Recognition It Has Received. My Hope Is That This Award Will Encourage More People To See The Film And Be Inspired By Its Message That Ordinary Citizens, Working Together, Can Change The World.

My Whole Model, From The Beginning, Was Not To Personally Publish A Single Document. I Provided These Documents To Journalists Because I Didn't Want My Biases To Decide What's In The Public Interest And What Is Not.

Something We Have To Remember Is That Everything About The Internet Is Interconnected. All Of Our Systems Are Not Just Common To Us Because Of The Network Links Between Them, But Because Of The Software Packages, Because Of The Hardware Devices That Comprise It. The Same Router That's Deployed In The United States Is Deployed In China.

You Will Never Be Completely Free From Risk If You're Free. The Only Time You Can Be Free From Risk Is When You're In Prison.

You Can't Come Up Against The World's Most Powerful Intelligence Agencies And Not Accept The Risk.

I'm Not A Spy, Which Is The Real Question

The Problem Is When [the State] Monitor All Of Us, En Masse, All Of The Time, Without Any Specific Justification For Intercepting In The First Place, Without Any Specific Judicial Showing That There's A Probable Cause For That Infringement Of Our Rights.

[bill] Binney Will Argue With You All Day About Thinthread, But His Idea Was That It Would Collect Everything About Everybody But Be Immediately Encrypted So No One Could Read It. Only A Court Could Give Intelligence Officials The Key To Decrypt It. The Idea Was To Find A Kind Of A Compromise Between [privacy Rights And] The Assertion That If You Don't Collect Things As They Happen, You Won't Have Them Later - Because What The Nsa Really Wants Is The Capability Of Retrospective Investigation.

The Chairs [in Congress] Are Part Of The "gang Of Eight." They Get Briefed On Every Covert-action Program And Everything Like That. They Know Where All The Bodies Are Buried. At The Same Time, They Get Far More Campaign Donations Than Anybody Else From Defense Contractors, From Intelligence Corporations, From Private Military Companies.

The United States Is More Reliant On The Technical Systems. We're More Reliant On The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet Than Any Other Nation Out There. And When There's Such A Low Barrier To Entering The Domain Of Cyber-attacks We're Starting A Fight That We Can't Win.

The Majority Of People In Developed Countries Spend At Least Some Time Interacting With The Internet, And Governments Are Abusing That Necessity In Secret To Extend Their Powers Beyond What Is Necessary And Appropriate.

The Only Thing I Fear Is The Harmful Effects On My Family, Who I Won't Be Able To Help Any More. That's What Keeps Me Up At Night.

Government Spying

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