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I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that.
Edward Snowden
When you are in positions of privileged access... you see things that may be disturbing. Over time, that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up.
I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.
I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA. I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it.
What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.
Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.
I support a guaranteed basic income. I think we should take care of sick people. I believe women can make their own choices and that the government is at its best when it's building bridges instead of bombs.
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.
I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, 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 do not expect to see home again, though that is what I want.
I never chose to be in Russia, and I would prefer to be in my own country, but if I can't make it home, I will continue to work very much in the same way that I have... What happens to me is not as important; I simply serve as the mechanism of disclosure.
Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are.
It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders.
I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.
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.
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong's rule of law.
Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.
Perhaps I am naive, but 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.
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 understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.
The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.
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.
If I had to describe myself, I wouldn't use words like 'hero.' I wouldn't use 'patriot', and I wouldn't use 'traitor.' I'd say I'm an American and I'm a citizen, just like everyone else.
I have had no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.
I do agree that when it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.
Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows.
If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home.
The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable.
You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.
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.
They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from, and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we, as the public, trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?
When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.
My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
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.
I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression.
The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists.
You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening.
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.
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.
The only time you can be completely free from risk is when you're in prison.
I don't want to harm my government. I want to help my government. But the fact that they are willing to completely ignore due process, they're willing to declare guilt without ever seeing a trial, these are things that we need to work against as a society and say, 'Hey, this is not appropriate.'
For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.
When people say, 'Why don't you face the music?' I say, 'You have to understand the music is not an open court and a fair trial.'
That's the beauty of the Internet is that we're no longer tied to our communities by physical connections.
Who I am really doesn't matter at all. If I'm the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.
Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there's a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I'm no longer alone.
I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.
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