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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.

-Edward Snowden

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You Shouldn't Send An

Edward Snowden

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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.

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

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

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

Extremists Are Not Going To Disappear.

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.

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

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

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.

A Lot Of People In 2008 Voted For Obama. I Did Not Vote For Him. I Voted For A Third Party. But I Believed In Obama's Promises. He Continued With The Policies Of His Predecessor.

[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.

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

I Was Living A Charmed Life.

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

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

When We Talk About The Assertion Of Basically New Government Privileges With Weak Or No Justification, We Don't Even Have To Look At International Law To See The Failings In Them.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

When We Think In The Context Of The Last Decade's Infringements Upon Personal Liberty And The Last Year's Revelations, It's Not About Surveillance. It's About Liberty.

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.

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.

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.

[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

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.

[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."

You Will Never Be Completely Free From Risk If You're Free. The Only Time You Can Be Free From Risk Is When You're In Prison.

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.

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

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

The Question Of Whether I, As A Whistleblower, Should Be Pardoned, Is Not For Me To Answer.

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.

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

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

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

I 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Even If It Were, You Run Into The Same Problem With International Commerce: If You Create A Device That Is Famous For Compromised Security And It Has An American Back Door, Nobody Is Gonna Buy It.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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."

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

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.

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

The United States Has Faced Threats From Criminal Groups, From Terrorists, From Spies Throughout Our History, And We Have Limited Our Responses. We Haven't Resorted To Total War Every Time We Have A Conflict Around The World, Because That Restraint Is What Defines Us. That Restraint Is What Gives Us The Moral Standing To Lead The World.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I Do Not Want To Live In A World Where Everything I Do And Say Is Recorded. That Is Not Something I Am Willing To Support Or Live Under.

Government Spying

When We Have Some Horrible Terrorist Attacks Happen In Some Country We See In The Recording That Follows, That The Intelligence Community Already Knew About These People In Advance. We Know That These Countries Were Involved In Intelligence Sharing Premiums, That They Benefited From Mass Surveillance, And Yet They Didn't Stop The Attacks. Yet At The Same Time We Immediately See Intelligence Officials Running To The Newspapers And Claiming That We Need More Surveillance, That We Need More Intrusion, That We Need More Expense Of Powers Because It Could Have Stopped An Attack.

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.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

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.

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

It's 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 [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.

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

The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

Consent Of The Governed

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

From The Very Beginning, I Said There Are Two Tracks Of Reform: There's The Political And The Technical. I Don't Believe The Political Will Be Successful, For Exactly The Reasons You Underlined. The Issue Is Too Abstract For Average People, Who Have Too Many Things Going On In Their Lives.

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.

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.

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

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

I Don't Want The Stage. I'm Terrified Of Giving These Talking Heads Some Distraction, Some Excuse To Jeopardize, Smear, And Delegitimize A Very Important Movement.

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.

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

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

I'm Still Working For The Government.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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'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?!"

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.

Too Often We Forget That Social And Political Movements Don't Happen Overnight. They Don't Bring Change Immediately - You Have To Build A Critical Mass Of Understanding Of The Issues.

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.

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.

I Do Not Expect To See Home Again.

Government Spying

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.

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

The United States Is More Reliant On The Technical Systems. We're More Reliant On The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet Than Any Other Nation Out There. And When There's Such A Low Barrier To Entering The Domain Of Cyber-attacks We're Starting A Fight That We Can't Win.

When 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."

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.

The Great Fear That I Have Regarding The Outcome For America Of These Disclosures Is That Nothing Will Change. [people] Won't Be Willing To Take The Risks Necessary To Stand Up And Fight To Change Things And In The Months Ahead, The Years Ahead, It's Only Going To Get Worse. [the Nsa Will] Say That Because Of The Crisis, The Dangers That We Face In The World, Some New And Unpredicted Threat, We Need More Authority, We Need More Power, And There Will Be Nothing The People Can Do At That Point To Oppose It. And It Will Be Turnkey Tyranny.

I Think We're Going To See A Move Away From That, Because Young People - Digital Natives Who Spend Their Life On The Internet - Get Saturated. It's Like A Fashion Trend, And Becomes A Sign Of A Lack Of Sophistication.

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

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

You Have Ceded The Concept Of Your Own Rights. You've Converted Them Into Something You Get As A Revocable Privilege From The Government, Something That Can Be Abrogated At Its Convenience. And That Has Diminished The Measure Of Liberty Within A Society.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

As A General Rule, So Long As You Have Any Choice At All, You Should Never Route Through Or Peer With The Uk Under Any Circumstances. Their Fibers Are Radioactive, And Even The Queen's Selfies To The Pool Boy Get Logged.

I 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.

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.

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

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.

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 Would Rather Be Without A State Than Without A Voice.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Question That We, As A Society, Have To Ask Is, Are Our Collective Rights Worth A Small Relative Advantage In Our Ability To Spy On Other Countries And Foreign Citizens? I Have My Opinion About That, But We All Collectively Have To Come To Our Opinion About It.

When You Use Any Kind Of Internet Based Capability, Any Kind Of Electronic Capability, To Cause Damage To A Private Entity Or A Foreign Nation Or A Foreign Actor, These Are Potential Acts Of War.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Nobody's Going To Vote For Isis.

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

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

Government Spying

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

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.

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

What Has A Great Value To Us As A Nation Is The Internet Itself. The Internet Is Critical Infrastructure To The United States. We Use The Internet For Every Communication That Businesses Rely On Every Day.

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

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

When Governments Go Too Far To Punish People For Actions That Are Dissent Rather Than A Real Threat To The Nation, They Risk Delegitimizing Not Just Their Systems Of Justice, But The Legitimacy Of The Government Itself. Because When They Bring Political Charges Against People For Acts That Were Clearly At Least Intended To Work In The Public Interest, They Deny Them The Opportunity To Mount A Public-interest Defense.

The 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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

Government Spying

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.

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