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I Believe Strongly That Occupy Wall Street Had Such Limits Because The Local Authorities Were Able To Enforce, Basically In Our Imaginations, An Image Of What Proper Civil Disobedience Is - One That Is Simply Ineffective.

-Edward Snowden

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I Believe Strongly That

Edward Snowden

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I Believe Strongly That Occupy Wall Street Had Such Limits Because The Local Authorities Were Able To Enforce, Basically In Our Imaginations, An Image Of What Proper Civil Disobedience Is - One That Is Simply Ineffective.

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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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

These [nsa] Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They're About Economic Spying, Social Control, And Diplomatic Manipulation. They're About Power.

This Whole Pre-criminal Investigation, Where We Watch Everybody, All The Time, Just In Case, Is Really An Extraordinary Departure From The Western Liberal Tradition.

I'm Ultimately Satisfied That We Know A Little Bit More About How The World Really Works.

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 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.

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.

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?

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 Would Say The First Key Concept Is That, In Terms Of Technological And Communication Progress In Human History, The Internet Is Basically The Equivalent Of Electronic Telepathy. We Can Now Communicate All The Time Through Our Little Magic Smartphones With People Who Are Anywhere, All The Time, Constantly Learning What They're Thinking, Talking About, Exchanging Messages. And This Is A New Capability Even Within The Context Of The Internet.

I Talk To People In The Aclu Office In New York All The Time. I'm Able To Participate In The Debate And To Campaign For Reform. I'm Just The First To Come Forward In The Manner That I Did And Succeed.

I Grew Up With The Understanding That The World I Lived In Was One Where People Enjoyed A Sort Of Freedom To Communicate With Each Other In Privacy, Without It Being Monitored, Without It Being Measured Or Analyzed Or Sort Of Judged By These Shadowy Figures Or Systems, Any Time They Mention Anything That Travels Across Public Lines.

The Courts Were Afraid To Challenge Executive Declarations Of What Would Happen. Now, Over The Last Year, We Have Seen - In Almost Every Single Court That Has Had This Sort Of National-security Case - That They Have Become Markedly More Skeptical.

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

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.

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

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

I Was Living A Charmed Life.

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.

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.

We Don't Have To Ask For Our Privacy, We Can Take It Back.

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

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.

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

Government Spying

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.

I Have A Somewhat Sneaky Way Of Effecting Political Change.

Political Change

You Can Show A Guy Sort Of Peeking Over The Wall, You Can See A Guy Tunneling Underneath, You Can See A Guy Going Through The Front Door. All Of Those, In Cyber Terms, Are Vulnerabilities, Because It's Not That You Have To Look For One Hole Of A Specific Type. It's The Whole Paradigm.

While The Us Constitution Marks These Programs As Illegal, My Government Argues That Secret Court Rulings, Which The World Is Not Permitted To See, Somehow Legitimize An Illegal Affair. These Rulings Simply Corrupt The Most Basic Notion Of Justice - That It Must Be Seen To Be Done. The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

Many Of Our Ally States Don't Have These Constitutional Protections - In The Uk, In New Zealand, In Australia. They've Lost The Right To Be Free From Unreasonable Search And Seizure Without Probable Cause. All Of Those Countries, In The Wake Of These Surveillance Revelations, Rushed Through Laws That Were Basically Ghostwritten By The National Security Agency To Enable Mass Surveillance Without Court Oversight, Without All Of The Standard Checks And Balances That One Would Expect.

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.

When The United States Cannibalize Dollars From The Defensive Business Of The Nsa, Securing Our Communications, Protecting Our Systems, Patching Zero-day Vulnerabilities, And Instead We're Giving Those Dollars To Be Used For Creating New Vulnerabilities In Our Systems So That They Can Surveil Us And Other People Abroad Who Use The Same Systems.

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.

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.

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.

[bill] Binney Designed Thinthread, An Nsa Program That Used Encryption To Try To Make Mass Surveillance Less Objectionable. It Would Still Have Been Unlawful And Unconstitutional.

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.

You Shouldn't Send An Email From A Computer That's Associated With You If You Don't Want It To Be Tracked Back To You. You Don't Want To Hack The Power Plant From Your House If You Don't Want Them To Follow The Trail Back And See Your Ip Address.

There Are Unquestionable Violations Of Our Constitution.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

If Even One Country, An Iceland For Example, Defects From This Global Legislative Bargain And Says No, We're Not Going To Enforcement Mass Surveillance Here. We're Not Going To Do That. That's Where All Of The Data Centres, All The Service Providers In The World Will Relocate To. And I Think That Gives Us A Real Chance To See A More Liberal Than Authoritarian Future.

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

I Believe Strongly That Occupy Wall Street Had Such Limits Because The Local Authorities Were Able To Enforce, Basically In Our Imaginations, An Image Of What Proper Civil Disobedience Is - One That Is Simply Ineffective.

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.

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.

The Only Reason I Do These Interviews - I Hate Talking About Myself, I Hate Doing This Stuff - Is Because Incredibly Well-meaning People, Whom I Respect And Trust, Tell Me That This Will Help Bring About Positive Changes. It's Not Going To Cause A Sea Change, But It Will Benefit The Public.

We Have To Recognise That Rights Are Being Violated. The United Nations Actually Filed A Report That Found That That Was The Case, That Mass Surveillance Is A Violation Of Rights.

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

Nobody's Going To Vote For Isis.

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.

My Intention Is To Ask The Courts And People Of Hong Kong To Decide My Fate.

I'm Not A Communist, A Socialist Or A Radical. But These Issues Have To Be Addressed.

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

[barton ] Gellman Printed A Great Anecdote: He Showed Two Google Engineers A Slide That Showed How The Nsa Was Doing This, And The Engineers "exploded In Profanity."

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

I've Been A Spy For Almost All Of My Adult Life - I Don't Like Being In The Spotlight.

The Internet Exchange Is Sort Of The Core Points Where All Of The International Cables Come Together, Where All Of The Internet Service Providers Come Together, And They Trade Lines With Each Other. These Are Priority One Targets For Any Sort Of Espionage Agency, Because They Provide Access To So Many People's Communications.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

Properly Implemented Strong Crypto Systems Are One Of The Few Things That You Can Rely On.

The Work Of A Generation Is Beginning Here, With Your Hearings, And You Have The Full Measure Of My Gratitude And Support.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?!"

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.

People Sometimes Say I Broke An Oath Of Secrecy - One Of The Early Charges Leveled Against Me. But It's A Fundamental Misunderstanding, Because There Is No Oath Of Secrecy For People Who Work In The Intelligence Community. You Are Asked To Sign A Civil Agreement, Called A Standard Form 312, Which Basically Says If You Disclose Classified Information, They Can Sue You; They Can Do This, That And The Other. And You Risk Going To Jail.

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.

I Believe That At This Point In History, The Greatest Danger To Our Freedom And Way Of Life Comes From The Reasonable Fear Of Omniscient State Powers Kept In Check By Nothing More Than Policy Documents.

Government Spying

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.

The Greatest Fear That I Have Regarding The Outcome For America Of These Disclosures Is That Nothing Will Change.

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

For Me, In Terms Of Personal Satisfaction, The Mission's Already Accomplished. I Already Won. As Soon As The Journalists Were Able To Work, Everything That I Had Been Trying To Do Was Validated. Because, Remember, I Didn't Want To Change Society. I Wanted To Give Society A Chance To Determine If It Should Change Itself.

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.

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.

America Is A Fundamentally Good Country. We Have Good People With Good Values Who Want To Do The Right Thing. But The Structures Of Power That Exist Are Working To Their Own Ends To Extend Their Capability At The Expense Of The Freedom Of All Publics.

I 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

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

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 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.

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

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

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?

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.

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.

There Have Been So Many Individuals Who Have Really Put A Lot On The Line. That They've Sacrificed So Much To Try To Protect The Principle Of Source Protection In The Journalism World. And I Think Julian Assange, And Wikileaks, And Sarah Harrison Have Really Been Extraordinary In Standing Up For That.

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.

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.

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.

Initially I Was Very Encouraged. 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.

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.

People Would Publish Their Websites; Other People Would Read Them. But There Was No Real Back And Forth Other Than Through E-mail. Web 2.0 Was What They Called The Collaborative Web - Facebook, Twitter, The Social Media.

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.

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.

[our System Of Education ]not Designed To Create Critical Thinkers.

Now Terrorism Is Not The Greatest Threat Facing Our Societies.

How Do We Preserve Our Civil Rights, Our Traditions As A Liberal Democracy, In A Time When Government Power Is Expanding And Is More And More Difficult To Check?

I Don't Go Out And Play Football And Stuff - That's Not Me. I Want To Think, I Want To Build, I Want To Talk, I Want To Create.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Definition Of A Security State Is One That Prioritizes Security Over All Other Considerations.

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.

Us Has To Be Able To Rely On A Safe And Interconnected Internet In Order To Compete With Other Countries.

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.

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.

If I Had To Guess What The Future's Going To Look Like For Me - Assuming It's Not An Orange Jumpsuit In A Hole - I Think I'm Going To Alternate Between Tech And Policy.

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

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

I Don't Care If I End Up In Jail Or Guantánamo Or Whatever, Kicked Out Of A Plane With Two Gunshots In The Face. I Did What I Did Because I Believe It Is The Right Thing To Do, And I Will Continue To Do That.

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.

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

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.

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, Unanalysed 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.

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.

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 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 Iraq War That I Signed Up For Was Launched On False Premises. The American People Were Misled. Now, Whether That Was Due To Bad Faith Or Simply Mistakes In Intelligence, I Can't Say For Sure. But I Can Say It Shows The Problem Of Putting Too Much Faith In Intelligence Systems Without Debating Them In Public.

The Public Needs To Know The Kinds Of Things A Government Does In Its Name, Or The 'consent Of The Governed' Is Meaningless... The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

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

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.

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.

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

Government Spying

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

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

If It Comes To A Question Of Law, The Charges They Brought Against Me - The Espionage Act - Is Called The Quintessential Political Crime. A Political Crime, In Legal Terms, Is Defined As Any Crime Against A State, As Opposed To Against An Individual. Assassination, For Example, Is Not A Political Crime Because You've Killed A Person, An Individual, And They've Been Harmed; Their Family's Been Harmed. But The State Itself, You Can't Be Extradited For Harming It.

What We're Really Debating Is Not Security Versus Liberty, It's Security Versus Surveillance. When We Talk About Electronic Interception, The Way That Surveillance Works Is It Preys On The Weakness Of Protections That Are Being Applied To All Of Our Communications. The Manner In Which They're Protected.

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

The Way The United States Intelligence Community Operates Is It Doesn't Limit Itself To The Protection Of The Homeland. It Doesn't Limit Itself To Countering Terrorist Threats, Countering Nuclear Proliferation. It's Also Used For Economic Espionage, For Political Spying To Gain Some Knowledge Of What Other Countries Are Doing.

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.

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

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

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.

Government Spying

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

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.

Encryption Works. Properly Implemented Strong Crypto Systems Are One Of The Few Things That You Can Rely On. Unfortunately, Endpoint Security Is So Terrifically Weak That Nsa Can Frequently Find Ways Around It.

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.

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.

I Have Been To The Darkest Corners Of Government, And What They Fear Is Light.

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.

Allowing The U.s. Government To Intimidate Its People With Threats Of Retaliation For Revealing Wrongdoing Is Contrary To The Public Interest.

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.

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.

Because, Remember, I Didn't Want To Change Society. I Wanted To Give Society A Chance To Determine If It Should Change Itself.

Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

I Think That's Actually What's Missing From Government, For The Most Part. We've Got A Lot Of Policy People, But We Have No Technologists, Even Though Technology Is Such A Big Part Of Our Lives. It's Just Amazing, Because Even These Big Silicon Valley Companies, The Masters Of The Universe Or Whatever, Haven't Engaged With Washington Until Recently. They're Still Playing Catch-up.

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.

There Were No Whistleblower Protections That Would've Protected Me - And That's Known To Everybody In The Intelligence Community. There Are No Proper Channels For Making This Information Available When The System Fails Comprehensively.

Congress Hasn't Declared War On The Countries - The Majority Of Them Are Our Allies - But Without Asking For Public Permission, Nsa Is Running Network Operations Against Them That Affect Millions Of Innocent People. And For What? So We Can Have Secret Access To A Computer In A Country We're Not Even Fighting?

Being A Patriot Doesn’t Mean Prioritizing Service To Government Above All Else. Being A Patriot Means Knowing When To Protect Your Country, Knowing When To Protect Your Constitution, Knowing When To Protect Your Countrymen, From The Violations Of And Encroachments Of Adversaries. And Those Adversaries Don’t Have To Be Foreign Countries.

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

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.

The Issue I Brought Forward Most Clearly Was That Of Mass Surveillance, Not Of Surveillance In General.

Being Confronted With The Realization That Work You Intended To Benefit People Is Being Used Against Them Has A Radicalizing Effect.

We've Learned That We've Allowed Technological Capabilities To Dictate Policies And Practices, Rather Than Ensuring That Our Laws And Values Guide Our Technological Capabilities.

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.

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

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

One Of The Foremost Activities Of The Nsa's Fad, Or Foreign Affairs Division, Is To Pressure Or Incentivize Eu Member States To Change Their Laws To Enable Mass Surveillance.

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.

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.

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.

[brazil] Went To The Un And Said, "we Need New Standards For This." We Need To Take A Look At What They're Calling "data Sovereignty."

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

Government Spying

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.

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.

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.

American History

The Question For Us Is Not What New Story Will Come Out Next. The Question Is, What Are We Going To Do About It?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's Not Much Value To Us Attacking Chinese Systems. We Might Take A Few Computers Offline. We Might Take A Factory Offline. We Might Steal Secrets From A University Research Programs, And Even Something High-tech. But How Much More Does The United States Spend On Research And Development Than China Does?

Research And Development

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.

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.

We Need To Put The Security Back In The National Security Agency. We Can't Have The National Surveillance Agency.

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

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.

People Say That [i'm A Celebrity], But I've Only Had To Sign Autographs For "civ-libs" Types. And I Autograph Court Orders.

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.

Let's Put It This Way. The United States Government Has Assembled A Massive Investigation Team Into Me Personally, Into My Work With The Journalists, And They Still Have No Idea What Documents Were Provided To The Journalist, What They Have, What They Don't Have, Because Encryption Works.

Before 2013, If You Said The Nsa Was Making Records Of Everybody's Phone Calls And The [government Communications Headquarters] Was Monitoring Lawyers And Journalists, People Raised Eyebrows And Called You A Conspiracy Theorist. Those Days Are Over.

I Believe That When [senator Ron] Wyden And [senator Mark] Udall Asked About The Scale Of This, They [the Nsa] Said It Did Not Have The Tools To Provide An Answer. We Do Have The Tools And I Have Maps Showing Where People Have Been Scrutinised Most. We Collect More Digital Communications From America Than We Do From The Russians.

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.

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