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We Are All Today Being Monitored In Advance And In Criminal Suspicion. And I Think That's Terrifying, And Deeply Illiberal As Concept. And That's Something That We Should Reject.

-Edward Snowden

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We Are All Today

Edward Snowden

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We Are All Today Being Monitored In Advance And In Criminal Suspicion. And I Think That's Terrifying, And Deeply Illiberal As Concept. And That's Something That We Should Reject.

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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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 Told The Government I'd Volunteer For Prison, As Long As It Served The Right Purpose.

That's One Of The Biggest Issues That We See In The Question Of Governments Right Now, I Think, In The Western World. Is That Increasingly All Of Our Elected Officials Are Pulled From The Same Class. These Aren't Normal People. I Don't Want To Say They're All Terrible People, But At The Same Time, They're Not Like You And Me. These Are People Who Have Sort Of A Nine To Five Working History.

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

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.

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.

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

We Are All Today Being Monitored In Advance And In Criminal Suspicion. And I Think That's Terrifying, And Deeply Illiberal As Concept. And That's Something That We Should Reject.

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.

If You Seek To Help, Join The Open Source Community And Fight To Keep The Spirit Of The Press Alive And The Internet Free. I Have Been To The Darkest Corners Of Government, And What They Fear Is Light.

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.

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.

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 Is Made To Appear As Though Not Knowing Everything About Everyone Is An Existential Crisis, Then You Feel That Bending The Rules Is Okay. Once People Hate You For Bending Those Rules, Breaking Them Becomes A Matter Of Survival.

Knowing Everything

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

Government Spying

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

Government Spying

If We Allow The United States To Set The Precedent That National Borders Don't Matter When It Comes To The Protection Of People's Information, Other Countries Are Watching. They're Paying Attention To Our Examples And What Is Normative Behavior In Terms Of Dealing With Digital Information.

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.

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.

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

I Describe It As Tribalism Because They're Very Tightly Woven Communities. Lack Of Civility Is Part Of It, Because That's How Internet Tribes Behave. We See This More And More In Electoral Politics, Which Have Become Increasingly Poisonous.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It's Really Hard To Take That Step-not Only Do I Believe In Something, I Believe In It Enough That I'm Willing To Set My Own Life On Fire And Burn It To The Ground.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Different [ronald] Reagan-era Authority: Eo 12333, An Executive Order For Foreign-intelligence Collection, As Opposed To The Ones We Now Use Domestically. So This One Isn't Even Authorized By Law. It's Just An Old-ass Piece Of Paper With Reagan's Signature On It, Which Has Been Updated A Couple Times Since Then. So What Happened Was That All Of A Sudden These Massive, Behemoth Companies Realized Their Data Centers - Sending Hundreds Of Millions Of People's Communications Back And Forth Every Day - Were Completely Unprotected, Electronically Naked.

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

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

America Should Be Cooling Down The Tensions In The Internet, Making It A More Trusted Environment, Making It A More Secure Environment, Making It A More Reliable Environment, Because That's The Foundation Of Our Economy And Our Future.

If We Don't Do Anything, If We Go Along With The Status Quo, We Are Going To Have A Mass Surveillance World.

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.

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

There's No Saving Me.

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

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.

Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

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

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.

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.

Our Rights Are Not Granted By Governments. They Are Inherent To Our Nature. But It's Entirely The Opposite For Governments: Their Privileges Are Precisely Equal To Only Those Which We Suffer Them To Enjoy.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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.

When People Talk About Web 2.0, They Mean That When The Internet, The World Wide Web, First Became Popular, It Was One Way Only.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

I'm Not A Movie Guy. I Don't Know All This Stuff That Comes With Celebrity. I Don't Know Who The Actors Will Be And Stuff Like That. But Anybody Who Wants To Talk About The Issues - That's Great.

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.

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

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.

You're Not Patriotic Just Because You Back Whoever's In Power Today Or Their Policies. You're Patriotic When You Work To Improve The Lives Of The People Of Your Country, Your Community And Your Family. Sometimes That Means Making Hard Choices, Choices That Go Against Your Personal Interest.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

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.

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

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

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

The Bare Bones Tools For A Cyber-attack Are To Identify A Vulnerability In The System You Want To Gain Access To Or You Want To Subvert Or You Want To Deny, Destroy, Or Degrade, And Then To Exploit It, Which Means To Send Codes, Deliver Code To That System Somehow And Get That Code To That Vulnerability, To That Crack In Their Wall, Jam It In There, And Then Have It Execute.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

The Internet Has To Be Protected From Intrusive Monitoring Or Else The Medium Upon Which We All Rely For The Basis Of Our Economy And Our Normal Life, We'll Lose That, And It's Going To Have Broad Effects As A Consequence That We Cannot Predict.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

The Government Has Granted Itself Power It Is Not Entitled To. There Is No Public Oversight. The Result Is People Like Myself Have The Latitude To Go Further Than They Are Allowed To.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

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

Individuals Have International Duties Which Transcend The National Obligations Of Obedience. Therefore Individual Citizens Have The Duty To Violate Domestic Laws To Prevent Crimes Against Peace And Humanity From Occurring.

Extremists Are Not Going To Disappear.

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

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