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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?

-Edward Snowden

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In The United States

Edward Snowden

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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?

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More From Edward Snowden

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Charges [government] Brought Against Me, For Example, Explicitly Denied My Ability To Make A Public-interest Defense.

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.

There's No Saving Me.

One Concern I Had While I Was Working Actively In The Intelligence Community - Being Someone Who Had Broad Access, Who Was Exposed To More Reports Than Average Individuals, Who Had A Better Understanding Of The Bigger Picture - Was That The Post - World War Ii, Post - Cold War Directions Of Societies Were Either Broadly Authoritarian Or [broadly] Liberal Or Libertarian.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Have A Somewhat Sneaky Way Of Effecting Political Change.

Political Change

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

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Government Spying

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

When People Say, "i Have Nothing To Hide," What They're Saying Is, "my Rights Don't Matter."

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Government Spying

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

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.

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.

We Don't Like To Use The Phrase "state Security" In The United States Because It Reminds Us Of All The Bad Regimes. But It's A Key Concept, Because When These Officials Are Out On Tv, They're Not Talking About What's Good For You. They're Not Talking About What's Good For Business. They're Not Talking About What's Good For Society. They're Talking About The Protection And Perpetuation Of A National State System.

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.

Radicals Are Not Going To Disappear. They're Going To Go Underground. They're Going To Be Hardened. And They're Not Going To Be Exposed To Contrary Ideas Made By Educated People Who Can Make Real, Convincing, And Persuasive Arguments To Deradicalise These People.

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

My Perspective Is If You're Not Willing To Be Called A Few Names To Help Out Your Country, You Don't Care Enough.

I Was Living A Charmed Life.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm Saying We Need To Be Aware Of It, And We Need To Be Able To Distinguish When Political Developments Are Occurring That Are Contrary To The Public Interest.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

We've Seen A Departure From The Traditional Work Of The National Security Agency. They've Become Sort Of The National Hacking Agency, The National Surveillance Agency. And They've Lost Sight Of The Fact That Everything They Do Is Supposed To Make Us More Secure As A Nation And A Society.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?!"

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

If I Wanted To See Your Emails Or Your Wife's Phone, All I Have To Do Is Use Intercepts. I Can Get Your Emails, Passwords, Phone Records, Credit Cards.

I Don't 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.

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.

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

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.

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

Defending Ourselves From Internet-based Attacks, Internet-originated Attacks, Is Much, Much More Important Than Our Ability To Launch Attacks Against Similar Targets In Foreign Countries.

The Rule Of Law Doesn't Mean The Police Are In Charge, But That We All Answer To The Same Laws.

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.

Using The Language Of Heroism, Calling Daniel Ellsberg A Hero, And Calling The Other People Who Made Great Sacrifices Heroes - Even Though What They Have Done Is Heroic - Is To Distinguish Them From The Civic Duty They Performed, And Excuses The Rest Of Us From The Same Civic Duty To Speak Out When We See Something Wrong, When We Witness Our Government Engaging In Serious Crimes, Abusing Power, Engaging In Massive Historic Violations Of The Constitution Of The United States. We Have To Speak Out Or We Are Party To That Bad Action.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Was Hoping To Catch [vladimir] Putin In A Lie - Like What Happened To Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper [in His Congressional Testimony]. So I Asked Putin Basically The Same Questions About Russian Mass Surveillance. I Knew He's Doing The Same Thing, But He Denied It.

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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

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

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

The Nsa And Israel Wrote Stuxnet Together.

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."

Nobody Needs To Justify Why They "need" A Right: The Burden Of Justification Falls On The One Seeking To Infringe Upon The Right. But Even If They Did, You Can't Give Away The Rights Of Others Because They're Not Useful To You. More Simply, The Majority Cannot Vote Away The Natural Rights Of The Minority. Arguing That You Don't Care About The Right To Privacy Because You Have Nothing To Hide Is No Different Than Saying You Don't Care About Free Speech Because You Have Nothing To Say.

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

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

One Of The Reasons That I Came Forward And Sort Burned Of My Life To The Ground, And I Can't Go Back And See My Family In The United States - I Obviously Lost My Job, Which I Was Quite Comfortable With. I Lost My Home. It Was Because I Felt There Was No Alternative.

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.

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

I've Got More Than Enough For My Needs [for Social Life In Moscow], Let's Put It That Way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

Where Are We Going To Reject That Easy But Flawed Process Of Letting The Intelligence Services Do Whatever They Want? It's Inevitable That It Will Happen. I Think It's Going To Be Where Internet Businesses Go.

Intelligence Services

If You Ask Anybody At Cyber Command Or Look At Any Of The Job Listings For Openings For Their Positions, You'll See That The One Thing They Don't Prioritize Is Computer Network Defense. It's All About Computer Network Attack And Computer Network Exploitation At Cyber Command.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Do Not Expect To See Home Again.

Government Spying

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.

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

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.

Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

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.

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

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 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 United States Need To Put Internet Processes, Policies, And Procedures In Place With Real Laws That Forbid Going Beyond The Borders Of What's Reasonable To Ensure That The Only Time That We And Other Countries Around The World Exercise These Authorities Are When It Is Absolutely Necessary.

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.

Citizens Have To Fight Suppression Of Information On Matters Of Vital Public Importance. To Tell The Truth Is Not A Crime.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Look At The Reactions Of Liberal Governments To The Surveillance Revelations During The Last Years. In The United States, We've Got This Big Debate, But We've Got Official Paralysis - Because They're The Ones Who Had Their Hand Caught Most Deeply In The Cookie Jar.

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.

We Decentralise Permissions Over The Use Of Our Communications.

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'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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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?

There Are More Important Things Than Money. If I Were Motivated By Money, I Could Have Sold These Documents To Any Number Of Countries And Gotten Very Rich.

It's Fascinating To See How Things Have Changed. Basically, Every Time The Us Government Gets Off The Soapbox Of The Sunday-morning Talk Shows, The Average American's Support For The Surveillance Revelations Grows.

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.

What I Wanted To Do Was Give Society The Information It Needed To Decide If It Wanted To Change The System.

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.

At The Trial Of Chelsea Manning, The Government Could Point To No Case Of Specific Damage That Had Been Caused By The Massive Revelation Of Classified Information. The Charges Are A Reaction To The Government's Embarrassment More Than Genuine Concern About These Activities, Or They Would Substantiate What Harms Were Done.

Genuine Concern

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

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

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.

Society Really Seems To Have Developed An Unquestioning Obedience Towards Spooky Types… Did We Get To Where We Are Today Via A Slippery Slope That Was Entirely Within Our Control To Stop? Or Was It A Relatively Instantaneous Sea Change That Sneaked In Undetected Because Of Pervasive Government Secrecy?

I Must Say I'm Surprised By How Skeptical Of The [barack] Obama Administration The Nation Has Been.

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

I Don't Think I Have Committed A Crime Outside The Domain Of The Us.

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

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

In The United States, There Hasn't Been Much Legislative Change On The Surveillance Issue, Although There Are Some Tepid Proposals.

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.

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

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."

There's No Question That The Us Is Engaged In Economic Spying. If There's Information At Siemens That They Think Would Be Beneficial To The National Interests, Not The National Security Of The United States, They'll Go After That Information And They'll Take It.

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.

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