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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.

-Edward Snowden

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What We're Really Debating

Edward Snowden

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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.

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More From Edward Snowden

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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

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

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

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

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

One Of The Saddest And Most Damaging Legacies Of The [george W.] Bush Administration Is The Increased Assertion Of The "state Secrets" Privilege, Which Kept Organizations Like The Aclu - Which Had Cases Of People Who Had Actually Been Tortured And Held In Indefinite Detention - From Getting Their Day In Court.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Internet Business

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."

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?

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 Have To Be Able To Ask Questions In Order To Answer Them.

There Are Times Throughout History And It Doesn't Take Long For Either An American Or A German, To Think About Times In The History Of Their Country Where The Law Provided The Government To Do Things Which Were Not Right.

The Nsa And Israel Wrote Stuxnet Together.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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?

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

Surveillance State

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

When 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

We Have To Call Mass Surveillance Mass Surveillance. We Can't Let Governments Around The World Redefine, And Sort Of Weasel Their Way Out Of It By Saying This Is Bulk Collection.

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.

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

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

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

Government Spying

I Have A Somewhat Sneaky Way Of Effecting Political Change.

Political Change

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Now Terrorism Is Not The Greatest Threat Facing Our Societies.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Government Spying

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

I 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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 Still Has No Idea What Documents I Have Because Encryption Works

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 Was Living A Charmed Life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nobody's Going To Vote For Isis.

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 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.

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

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 New York Times And The Guardian Came Out And Said, "hey, Clemency For Snowden." But For Me, The Key - And I've Said This From The Beginning: It's Not About Me. I Don't Care If I Get Clemency. I Don't Care What Happens To Me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

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

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

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

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.

Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

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.

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.

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

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

Government Spying

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

As A General Rule, Us-based Multinationals Should Not Be Trusted Until They Prove Otherwise. This Is Sad, Because They Have The Capability To Provide The Best And Most Trusted Services In The World If They Actually Desire To Do So.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

We Decentralise Permissions Over The Use Of Our Communications.

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

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

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.

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

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.

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'm Still Alive, And I Don't Lose Sleep Because I Have Done What I Feel I Needed To Do, It Was The Right Thing To Do And I Am Not Going To Be Afraid.

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.

All Those People Who Went Out [to Occupy Wall Street] Missed Work, Didn't Get Paid. Those Were Individuals Who Were Already Feeling The Effects Of Inequality, So They Didn't Have A Lot To Lose. And Then The Individuals Who Were Louder, More Disruptive And, In Many Ways, More Effective At Drawing Attention To Their Concerns Were Immediately Castigated By Authorities. They Were Cordoned Off, Pepper-sprayed, Thrown In Jail.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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."

It's Much Easier, I Think, To Protect Communications While They're In Transit At Least, Than It Is To Enforce Legislation In Every Country In The World To Say That You Can't Do This.

I 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.

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

You Can't Come Up Against The World's Most Powerful Intelligence Agencies And Not Accept The Risk. If They Want To Get You, Over Time They Will.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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.

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

[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."

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

Sphere Of Influence

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

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

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

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.

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

Someone Responding To The Story Said 'real Spies Do Not Speak Like That'. Well, I Am A Spy And That Is How They Talk. Whenever We Had A Debate In The Office On How To Handle Crimes, They Do Not Defend Due Process - They Defend Decisive Action. They Say It Is Better To Kick Someone Out Of A Plane Than Let These People Have A Day In Court. It Is An Authoritarian Mindset In General.

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

[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."

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 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.

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

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

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?

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

I Took What I Knew To The Public, So What Affects All Of Us Can Be Discussed By All Of Us In The Light Of Day, And I Asked The World For Justice.

[i 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.

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