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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.

-Edward Snowden

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From The Very Beginning,

Edward Snowden

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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.

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More From Edward Snowden

I Don't Think It's Going To Be Related To Social Or Economic Policies; It's Going To Be The Fact That [barack Obama] Said Let's Go Forward, Not Backward, In Regard To The Violations Of Law That Occurred Under The Bush Administration.

I Have No Intention Of Hiding Who I Am Because I Know I Have Done Nothing Wrong.

Government Spying

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

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.

As Inequality Grows, The Basic Bonds Of Social Fraternity Are Fraying - As We Discussed In Regard To Occupy Wall Street. As Tensions Increase, People Will Become More Willing To Engage In Protest. But That Moment Is Not Now.

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 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.

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.

I Can Do More Good Outside Of Prison... This Country Is Worth Dying For.

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

When The Police Officers Knock On Your Door With A Warrant, They Don't Expect You To Give Them A Tour. It's Supposed To Be An Adversarial Process So That It's Used In These Extraordinary Powers Are Applied Only When There's No Alternative. Only When They're Absolutely Necessary, And Only When They're Proportionate To The Threat Faced By These Individuals.

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.

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

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?

Our Founders Did Not Write That 'we Hold These Truths To Be Self-evident, That All Us Persons Are Created Equal.'

The Nsa Was Actually Concerned Back In The Time Of The Crypto-wars With Improving American Security. Nowadays, We See That Their Priority Is Weakening Our Security, Just So They Have A Better Chance Of Keeping An Eye On 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'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.

The Sad Truth Is That Societies That Demand Whistleblowers Be Martyrs Often Find Themselves Without Either, And Always When It Matters The Most.

The Internet Is The Most Complex System That Humans Have Ever Invented. And With Every Internet Enabled Operation That We've Seen So Far, All Of These Offensive Operations, We See Knock On Effects. We See Unintended Consequences.

Unintended Consequences

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

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.

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.

Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

There Can Be No Faith In Government If Our Highest Offices Are Excused From Scrutiny - They Should Be Setting The Example Of Transparency.

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.

Nobody's Going To Vote For Isis.

By Putting These Sort Of Lines Around What Ideas Are Proper Or Improper, We Lose Things.

Radicalism And Extremism, While They Are Dangers, They Exist In Every Society On Some Level.

The Nsa And Israel Wrote Stuxnet Together.

It's Clear The Cia Was Trying To Play 'keep Away' With Documents Relevant To An Investigation By Their Overseers In Congress, And That's A Serious Constitutional Concern. But It's Equally If Not More Concerning That We're Seeing Another 'merkel Effect,' Where An Elected Official Does Not Care At All That The Rights Of Millions Of Ordinary Citizens Are Violated By Our Spies, But Suddenly It's A Scandal When A Politician Finds Out The Same Thing Happens To Them.

If I Am Traitor, Who Did I Betray? I Gave All My Information To The American Public, To American Journalists Who Are Reporting On American Issues. If They See That As Treason, I Think People Really Need To Consider Who They Think They're Working For. The Public Is Supposed To Be Their Boss, Not Their Enemy.

Us Administration Does Not Want Me To Return. People Forget How I Ended Up In Russia. They Waited Until I Departed Hong Kong To Cancel My Passport In Order To Trap Me In Russia, Because It's The Most Effective Attack They Have Against Me, Given The Political Climate In The United States.

Terrorism Kills Far Fewer People Than Cigarettes, Or Alcohol, Or Car Accidents. But We Don't See Ourselves Restructuring Society And Lives In Order To Make Those Threats Go Away.

I Read These Polls Because Civil-liberties Organizations Tell Me I Need To Be Aware Of Public Opinion.

I Saw Things That Reached A Point That I Could No Longer Conscientiously Participate With Them. And I Simply Do What I Could To Allow The Public To Make A Better Decision About Whether Or Not These Things Should Continue.

Suspicionless Surveillance Has No Place In A Democracy. The Next 60 Days Are A Historic Opportunity To Rein In The Nsa, But The Only One Who Can End The Worst Of Its Abuses Is You. Call Your Representatives And Tell Them That The Unconstitutional 'bulk Collection' Of Americans' Private Records Under Section 215 Of The Patriot Act Must End.

A Child Born Today Will Grow Up With No Conception Of Privacy At All.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

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.

We Can Still Publicly Post A Message To Facebook That's Globally Readable. But We Could Also Adjust Things So That They Can Only Be Shared With Those Closest To Us, And The Confident That This Is Enforced Through Both Legal And A Systemic Standards-based Protection.

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.

The People At The Nsa Aren't Trying To Ruin Your Life. They're Not Trying To Put You In Authoritarian Dystopia. These Are Normal People Trying To Do Good Work In Hard Circumstances.

In America, We Collect More Digital Communications From America Than We Do From The Russians.

Anyway, It's Not True That The Authorities Cannot Access The Content Of The Phone Even If There Is No Back Door. When I Was At The Nsa, We Did This Every Single Day, Even On Sundays. I Believe That Encryption Is A Civic Responsibility, A Civic Duty.

It Doesn't Need To Be Consistently Concentrated In These Venture-capital Funds And Things Like That.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Considered Bringing Forward Information About These Surveillance Programs Prior To The Election, But I Held Off Because I Believed That [barack] Obama Was Genuine When He Said He Was Going To Change Things. I Wanted To Give The Democratic Process Time To Work.

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

Any Analyst At Any Time Can Target Anyone. Any Selector, Anywhere I, Sitting At My Desk, Certainly Had The Authorities To Wiretap Anyone, From You Or Your Accountant, To A Federal Judge, To Even The President

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.

[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

It Is Interesting That So Many People Who Become Disenchanted, Who Protest Against Their Own Organizations, Are People Who Contributed Something To Them And Then Saw How It Was Misused.

It's Important To Remember When You Start Doing Things Like Attacking Hospitals Through The Internet, When You Start Attacking Things Like Internet Exchange Points, When Something Goes Wrong, People Can Die. If A Hospital's Infrastructure Is Affected, Lifesaving Equipment Turns Off.

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.

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.

I've Been Recognized Every Now And Then. It's Always In Computer Stores. It's Something Like Brain Associations, Because I'll Be In The Grocery Store And Nobody Will Recognize Me. Even In My Glasses, Looking Exactly Like My Picture, Nobody Will Recognize Me. But I Could Be Totally Clean-shaven, Hat On, Looking Nothing Like Myself In A Computer Store, And They're Like, "snowden?!"

If I Target For Example An Email Address, For Example Under Faa 702, And That Email Address Sent Something To You, Joe America, The Analyst Gets It. All Of It. Ips, Raw Data, Content, Headers, Attachments, Everything. And It Gets Saved For A Very Long Time - And Can Be Extended Further With Waivers Rather Than Warrants.

I Care More About The Country Than What Happens To Me. But We Can't Allow The Law To Become A Political Weapon Or Agree To Scare People Away From Standing Up For Their Rights, No Matter How Good The Deal. I'm Not Going To Be Part Of That.

An Investigation Found The Specific People Who Authorized The Warrantless Wiretapping Of Millions And Millions Of Communications, Which Per Count Would Have Resulted In The Longest Sentences In World History, And Our Highest Official Simply Demanded The Investigation Be Halted. Who "can" Be Brought Up On Charges Is Immaterial When The Rule Of Law Is Not Respected. Laws Are Meant For You, Not For Them.

There Was A Real Choice When [barack Obama] Became President. It Was A Very Difficult Choice - To Say, "we're Not Going To Hold Senior Officials To Account With The Same Laws That Every Other Citizen In The Country Is Held To," Or "this Is A Nation That Believes In The Rule Of Law."

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.

I Went To A Website The Other Day And Right At The Top Of The Page It Showed Me My Ip Address. It Was The Most Disturbing Moment I Have Ever Experienced. This Website Even Told Me What Internet Browser I Was Using, And What Day It Was. Computers Can Do Anything.

As I Said Before, [patriotism] Is Distinct From Acting To Benefit The Government - A Distinction That's Increasingly Lost Today.

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

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.

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

Increasingly We're Seeing These Ultra-partisan Sites Getting Larger And Larger Readerships Because People Are Self-selecting Themselves Into Communities.

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

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

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.

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.

When We Look At How, Constitutionally, Only Congress Can Declare War, And That Is Routinely Ignored. Not Nato Or The Un, But Congress Has To Authorize These Endless Wars, And It Isn't.

You Would Be Surprised How Effective, At Least For Influencing Low-information Voters, Negative Propaganda About Me Is.

When People Are Talking About Cyber Weapons, Digital Weapons, What They Really Mean Is A Malicious Program That's Used For A Military Purpose. A Cyber Weapon Could Be Something As Simple As An Old Virus From 1995 That Just Happens To Still Be Effective If You Use It For That Purpose.

They Are Intent On Making Every Conversation And Every Form Of Behaviour In The World Known To Them.

Government Spying

If The Obama Administration Responds With An Even Harsher Hand Against Me, They Can Be Assured That They'll Soon Find Themselves Facing An Equally Harsh Public Response.

We're Opening The Doors To People Launching Missiles And Dropping Bombs By Taking The Human Out Of The Decision Chain For Deciding How We Should Respond To These Threats. And This Is Something We're Seeing More And More Happening In The Traditional Means As Our Methods Of Warfare Become Increasingly Automated And Roboticized Such As Through Drone Warfare.

Getting Inequality Out There Into The Consciousness Was Important. All These Political Pundits Now Talking About The 2014 And 2016 Elections Are Talking About Inequality.

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

I Have Been A Systems Engineer, Systems Administrator, A Senior Adviser For The Central Intelligence Agency, A Solutions Consultant And A Telecommunications Information Systems Officer.

People Do Not Like Being Lied To, And They Do Not Like Having Their Rights Violated. So As Soon As [officials] Stop Making Arguments, You See Support For Me Starts To Rise.

If You’re Not Acting On Your Beliefs, Then They Probably Aren’t Real.

The Us Government Still Has No Idea What Documents I Have Because Encryption Works

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.

When You Think About The Abolition Of Slavery For Example, For The Ruling Class With The Rich White People Owning Plantations And States, And Things Like That, Slavery Was To Their Benefit. To Oppose It Didn't Make Any Sense At All On A Rational Basis. But On A Rights Basis, On A Principle Basis, It Made Obvious, Overwhelming Sense.

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.

Every Time You Pick Up The Phone, Dial A Number, Write An E-mail, Make A Purchase, Travel On The Bus Carrying A Cell Phone, Swipe A Card Somewhere, You Leave A Trace, And The Government Has Decided That It's Good Idea To Collect It All, Everything, Even If You've Never Been Suspected Of Doing A Crime.

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.

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

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

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.

I Don't Want To Live In A Society That Does These Sort Of Things.

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.

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.

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.

[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."

Has The Center Of Gravity Shifted Such That All Governments Have Greater Powers And Fewer Restrictions Than They Ever Had, And Are Empowered By Technology In A Way That No Government Ever Was In The Past?

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.

I Have A Somewhat Sneaky Way Of Effecting Political Change.

Political Change

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.

The Fbi Was Creating A World Where Citizens Rely On Apple To Defend Their Rights, Rather Than The Other Way Around.

If We Simply Follow The Rules That A State Imposes Upon Us When That State Is Acting Contrary To The Public Interest, We're Not Actually Improving Anything. We're Not Changing Anything.

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.

I Don't Want To Live In A World Where There's No Privacy, And Therefore No Room For Intellectual Exploration And Creativity.

Acting Government Officials, They Said They Wanted - They Would Be Happy, They Would Love To Put A Bullet In My Head, To Poison Me As I Was Returning From The Grocery Store, And Have Me Die In The Shower.

We Should Know At Least The Broad Strokes Of The Powers That The Government's Claiming In Our Name, And Using Allegedly, On Our Behalf. And Also Against Us As Well.

If An Adversary Didn't Target Our Power Plants But They Did Target The Core Routers, The Backbones That Tie Our Internet Connections Together, Entire Parts Of The United States Could Be Cut Off. That Would Have A Tremendous Impact On Us As A Society And It Would Have A Policy Backlash.

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

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

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.

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 These Traditional Political Parties That Are Less And Less Responsive To The Needs Of Ordinary People, So People Are In Search Of Their Own Values.

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?

Bulk Collection Means All Of Your Communications Are Being Secretly Intercepted. They Are Being Stolen As They Cross India, And They're Being Stored In These Silos So That They Can Be Rifled Through At The Convenience Of Secret Agents, Basically.

I Don't Spend All Day Running Hand-on-hat From Shadowy Figures - I'm In Exile.

You Simply Have To Eventually Fall Under Suspicion From Somebody Even By A Wrong Call. And Then They Can Use This System To Go Back In Time And Scrutinize Every Decision You've Ever Made, Every Friend You've Ever Discussed Something With. And Attack You On That Basis To Sort To Derive Suspicion From An Innocent Life And Paint Anyone In The Context Of A Wrongdoer.

Government Spying

When The Us Government Got Word That I Was Planning To Leave Russia To Go To Latin America, They Brought Down The Plane Of The - The Presidential Plane, Which Had Diplomatic Protection, That Had The Bolivian President On Board. They Closed The Airspace In Four Different Countries In Europe, I Believe, Which Was Extraordinary, Unprecedented.

When It Comes To Cyber Warfare, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth. The Technical Sector Is The Backbone Of The American Economy, And If We Start Engaging In These Kind Of Behaviors, In These Kind Of Attacks, We're Setting A Standard, We're Creating A New International Norm Of Behavior That Says This Is What Nations Do. This Is What Developed Nations Do.

What Defines Patriotism, For Me, Is The Idea That One Rises To Act On Behalf Of One's Country.

If I And Other Whistleblowers Are Sentenced To Long Years In Prison Without So Much As A Chance To Explain Our Motivations To A Jury, It Will Have A Deeply Chilling Effect On Future Whistleblowers Working As I Did To Expose Government Abuse And Overreach. It Will Chill Speech. It Will Corrode The Quality Of Our Democracy.

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.

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

Do We Want To Emulate China In The Way That China Emulates The West? I Think, For Most Americans, The Answer To That Question Would Be No.

Are Our Competitors - For Example, China, Which Is A Deeply Authoritarian Nation - Becoming More Authoritarian Or More Liberal Over Time?

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.

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.

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

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 Would Rather Be Without A State Than Without A Voice.

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

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.

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.

We Are No Longer Citizens, We No Longer Have Leaders. We're Subjects, And We Have Rulers.

All The Governments Just Want To Have More Power When It Comes To Economic Espionage, Diplomatic Manipulation And Political Influence.

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.

The Community Of Technical Experts Who Really Manage The Internet, Who Built The Internet And Maintain It, Are Becoming Increasingly Concerned About The Activities Of Agencies Like The Nsa Or Cyber Command, Because What We See Is That Defense Is Becoming Less Of A Priority Than Offense.

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

When It Comes To Social Policies, I Believe Women Have The Right To Make Their Own Choices, And Inequality Is A Really Important Issue.

Richard Nixon Got Kicked Out Of Washington For Tapping One Hotel Suite. Today We're Tapping Every American Citizen In The Country, And No One Has Been Put On Trial For It Or Even Investigated. We Don't Even Have An Inquiry Into It.

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

Ending Mass Surveillance Of Private Phone Calls Under The Patriot Act Is A Historic Victory For The Rights Of Every Citizen. Yet While We Have Reformed This One Program, Many Others Remain.

The New Iphone Has Encryption That Protects The Contents Of The Phone. This Means If Someone Steals Your Phone - If A Hacker Or Something Images Your Phone - They Can't Read What's On The Phone Itself, They Can't Look At Your Pictures, They Can't See The Text Messages You Send, And So Forth. But It Does Not Stop Law Enforcement From Tracking Your Movements Via Geolocation On The Phone If They Think You Are Involved In A Kidnapping Case, For Example.

The State Says: "well, In Order For It To Be Legitimate Civil Disobedience, You Have To Follow These Rules." They Put Us In "free-speech Zones"; They Say You Can Only Do It At This Time, And In This Way, And You Can't Interrupt The Functioning Of The Government. They Limit The Impact That Civil Disobedience Can Achieve. We Have To Remember That Civil Disobedience Must Be Disobedience If It's To Be Effective.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

People At Civil-liberties Organizations Say It's A Sea Change, And That It's Very Clear Judges Have Begun To Question More Critically Assertions Made By The Executive. Even Though It Seems So Obvious Now, It Is Extraordinary In The Context Of The Last Decade, Because Courts Had Simply Said They Were Not The Best Branch To Adjudicate These Claims - Which Is Completely Wrong, Because They Are The Only Nonpolitical Branch. They Are The Branch That Is Specifically Charged With Deciding Issues That Cannot Be Impartially Decided By Politicians.

We Decentralise The Ability To Decide The Level Of Publicity That's Attached To Any Of Our Communications.

Candidates Run For Election On Campaign Promises, But Once They're Elected They Renege On Those Promises, Which Happened With President [barack] Obama On Guantánamo, The Surveillance Programs And Investigating The Crimes Of The Bush Administration. These Were Very Serious Campaign Promises That Were Not Fulfilled.

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.

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.

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

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.

Some Months After [keith Alexander] Made That Statement [edward Snowden Cause Grave And Irrevocable Harm To The Nation], The New Director Of The Nsa, Michael Rogers, Said That, In Fact, He Doesn't See The Sky Falling. It's Not So Serious After All.

Someone Recently Talked About Mass Surveillance And The Nsa Revelations As Being The Atomic Moment For Computer Scientists. The Atomic Bomb Was The Moral Moment For Physicists. Mass Surveillance Is The Same Moment For Computer Scientists, When They Realize That The Things They Produce Can Be Used To Harm A Tremendous Number Of People.

When You Are Subverting The Power Of Government, That's A Fundamentally Dangerous Thing To Democracy.

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.

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.

A Political Decision Has Been Made Not To Irritate The Intelligence Community. The Spy Agencies Are Really Embarrassed, They're Really Sore - The Revelations Really Hurt Their Mystique. The Last Ten Years, They Were Getting The Zero Dark Thirty Treatment - They're The Heroes. The Surveillance Revelations Bring Them Back To Big Brother Kind Of Narratives, And They Don't Like That At All.

We Have Seen Enough Criminality On The Part Of Government. It Is Hypocritical To Make This Allegation Against Me. They Have Narrowed The Public Sphere Of Influence.

Sphere Of Influence

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.

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

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.

[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.

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

Government Spying

When It Comes To Political Engagement, I'm Not A Politician - I'm An Engineer.

In The End, The Obama Administration Is Not Afraid Of Whistleblowers Like Me, Bradley Manning Or Thomas Drake. We Are Stateless, Imprisoned Or Powerless. No, The Obama Administration Is Afraid Of You. It Is Afraid Of An Informed, Angry Public Demanding The Constitutional Government It Was Promised - And It Should Be.

I Do Not Expect To See Home Again.

Government Spying

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

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.

If You Begin Acting Contrary To The Public's Interest, And There Is No Alternative Governmental Model, With Which You're Willing To Engage, We, The People, Will Have To Put Forth Our Own Extra Governmental Models And Methods Of Trying To Restore The Balance Of Liberty To The Liberal Tradition Of Western Society.

I Think It's Reasonable That The Government, When It Has A Warrant From A Court, When It's Exposed To Scrutiny By A Legal Process That Would Be Upheld, Not Just Nationally, But Internationally As A Reliable And Robust Standard Rights Protection, They Can Enjoy Certain Powers. This Is No Different From Having The Police Able To Get A Warrant To Go And Search Your House, To Kick At Your Door Because They Think You're An Arms Dealer Or Something Like That. There Needs To Be A Process Involved, It Needs To Be Public, And It Needs To Be Challengeable In Court At All Times.

Maybe Boutique Media, Maybe People Who Are Reading Papers And Talking To Academics And Whatnot, Maybe They Understand, Because They're High-information. But A Lot Of People Are Still Unaware That I Never Intended To End Up In Russia. They're Not Aware That Journalists Were Live-tweeting Pictures Of My Seat On The Flight To Latin America I Wasn't Able To Board Because The Us Government Revoked My Passport.

The 'music' Is Not An Open Court And A Fair Trial.

By Leaning On Companies, By Leaning On Infrastructure Providers, By Leaning On Researchers, Graduate Students, Post-docs, Even Undergrads, To Look At The Challenges Having An Untrusted Internet, Where We Have To Put Our Communications On Wires That Are Owned By A Phone Company That We Can't Trust, That's Working In Collaboration With A Government That We Can't Trust, In Areas Around The World, We Can Restructure That Communications Fabric In A Way That It's Encrypted.

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.

I Have Used Mass Surveillance To Target People, So I Do Know How It Works.

As For Labeling Someone A Whistleblower, I Think It Does Them - It Does All Of Us - A Disservice, Because It "otherizes" Us.

Going All The Way Back To Daniel Ellsberg, It Is Clear That The Government Is Not Concerned With Damage To National Security, Because In None Of These Cases Was There Damage.

Cyber Command Is Supposed To Be Defending Our Critical Infrastructure At Home, But They Are Spending So Much Time Looking At How To Attack Networks, How To Break Systems, And How To Turn Things Off. I Don't Think It Adds Up As Representing A Defensive Team.

We Have To Decide Why Terrorism Is A New Threat. There Has Always Been Terrorism.

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.

It's Ok If We Wiretap Osama Bin Laden. I Want To Know What He's Planning - Obviously Not Him Nowadays, But That Kind Of Thing. I Don't Care If It's A Pope Or A Bin Laden. As Long As Investigators Must Go To A Judge - An Independent Judge, A Real Judge, Not A Secret Judge - And Make A Showing That There's Probable Cause To Issue A Warrant, Then They Can Do That. And That's How It Should Be Done.

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.

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

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.

One Of The Kind Of Unexpectedly Liberating Things Of Becoming This Global Fugitive Is The Fact That You Don't Worry So Much About Tomorrow. You Think More About Today. And Unexpectedly, I Like That Very Much.

The Majority Of Terrorist Attacks That Have Been Disrupted In The United States Have Been Disrupted Due To Things Like The Time Square Bomber, Who Was Caught By A Hotdog Vendor, Not A Mass Surveillance Program, Not A Cyber-espionage Campaign.

There Is More Action In Some Other Countries. In Germany, They've Called For A Very Serious Inquiry That's Discovering More And More. They've Just Discovered A Significant Violation Of The German Constitution That Had Been Concealed From The Parliament.

When People Conceptualize A Cyber-attack, They Do Tend To Think About Parts Of The Critical Infrastructure Like Power Plants, Water Supplies, And Similar Sort Of Heavy Infrastructure, Critical Infrastructure Areas. And They Could Be Hit, As Long As They're Network Connected, As Long As They Have Some Kind Of Systems That Interact With Them That Could Be Manipulated From Internet Connection.

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.

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