- Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.
- There have, of course, been some stories where my calculation of what is not public interest differs from that of reporters, but it is for this precise reason that publication decisions were entrusted to journalists and their editors. I recognize I have clear biases influencing my judgment.
- There is a technical solution to every political problem...In general, if you agree with the first amendment principles, you agree with encryption. It's just code. Arguing against encryption would be analogous to arguing against hidden meanings in paintings or poetry.
- The NSA is surely not the Stasi, but we should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundations of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.
- What we recoil against most strongly is not that such surveillance can theoretically occur, but that it was done without a majority of society even being aware it was possible.
- [on current threats to basic freedoms] There is a far cry between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement - where it is targeted, it's based on reasonable suspicion, individualized suspicion and warranted action - and the sort of dragnet mass surveillance that puts entire populations under a sort of an eye and sees everything, even when it is not needed. This is a trend in the relationship between the governing and the governed in America.
- [by video-link from Moscow to the TED conference, March 18, 2014] People should be able to buy a book online..without wondering about how these events are going to look to an agent of the government...The NSA had 2,776 violations of US Presidential orders, and the Foreign Surveillance act in just a single year... We don't have to give up our privacy to have good government. We don't have to give up our liberty to have security...I didn't do this to be safe. I did this to do what was right. I'm not going to stop my work in the public interest.
- Would I do it again? ...Absolutely.
- [observation, 2014] Returning to the U.S., I think, is the best solution for the government, the public and myself - but it's unfortunately not possible in the face of current whistle-blower-protection laws which, through a failure in law, did not cover national security contractors like myself.
- [on Citizenfour (2014)] 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.[2015]
- 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. All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed.
- [observation, 2015] I have paid a price, but I feel comfortable with the decisions I've made.
- [on the 2016 issue involving a request for Apple to break into a terrorist's cell-phone] The FBI is creating a world where citizens rely on Apple to defend their rights.
- [on living in Russia] I can adapt. I can live life as an American more or less. That's the beauty of the internet, that we are no longer tied to our communities merely by, you know, physical connections. Right now, I'm watching a show [called] The Wire (2002) about surveillance [laughs], which is...I'm really enjoying it. Second season is not so great... [from "Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden", NBC, May 2014]
- The reality here is that, yes, Donald Trump has appointed a new director of the Central Intelligence Agency who uses me as a specific example to say that, look, dissidents should be put to death. But if I get hit by a bus, or a drone, or dropped off an airplane tomorrow, you know what? It doesn't actually matter that much to me, because I believe in the decisions that I've already made. [2016]
- It's very difficult to respond in a serious way to any statement made by Donald Trump. [Sept.2015]
- [on Hillary Clinton's private email server] If an ordinary worker at the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency ... were sending details about the security of embassies ... meetings with private government officials, foreign government officials, and the statements that were made to them in confidence over unclassified email systems, they would not only lose their job and lose their clearance, they would very likely face prosecution for it. [Sept.2015]
- [on surrendering to the American government] They said they can't promise I'll get a fair trial, they only promised they won't torture me.
- [on the Espionage Act of 1917] This is a law which prohibits who's charged with this crime from telling the jury why it is they did what they did, this is fundamentally against the idea of a fair trial, if you can't explain yourself to a jury, why have a trial at all?
- Every act of progression in our country, included conflict with the law.
- Right and wrong has a very different standard with legal and illegal.
- [on being called a traitor] What we did to traitors in the 1700's was that we made them our President.
- [on Donald Trump being elected President of the United States] This feels like a year in which everybody was wrong about everything, so many people had predictions and so many people had ideas, and I think most Americans, simply could not imagine where we would be, where we are today, and yet here we are.
- Presidents come and go, but policies stay.
- [on the 2016 Presidential election] There may never be a safer election in which to vote for a third option.
- We can't wait for someone to change the country, we have to do it ourselves.
- Don't be afraid of tomorrow, be ready.
- [on Theresa May] A sort of Darth Vader in the United Kingdom.
- The law is not a substitute for morality.
- Rights are the thing that stands between decades and centuries of the democratic process.
- When we have all three parts of the government under the control of a single party, that is a moment of systemic risk.
- Rights are a way to implement the will of the majority.
- [on Chelsea Manning] She has tried to take her life twice so far, hasn't she suffered enough?
- [on whistleblowing as a moral obligation for the future] It's not about what you want. It's about what we must do. The invention of artificial general intelligence is opening Pandora's Box - and I believe that box will be opened. We can't prevent it from being opened. But what we can do is, we can slow the process of unlocking that box. We can do it by days. We can do it by decades, until the world is prepared to handle the evils that we know will be released into the world from that box. And the way that we do that, the way that we slow that process of opening the box, is by removing the greed from the process, which I believe is the primary driver for the development of so much of this technology today. (...) We should not, and we must not, ban research into machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that have human impact. But we can, and we should, ban the commercial trade in these technologies at this stage. And what that will do is it means that academic researchers - public interest organizations, the scientists and researchers who are driven by the public interest [and] the common good - will continue their work. But all of the companies that are doing this now hold it from these that are pursuing these capabilities to amplify their own power and profits, they will be deterred, because they will have less incentive to do these things now. [Nov. 2019, at IDFA]
- [on what has changed since 2013] When I looked at what was happening in the world and [saw] the direction of developments since I came forward [in 2013], I was haunted by these developments - so much so that I began to consider: What were the costs of silence? Which is [something] I understand very well, given my history. When you see the rise of authoritarianism - even in Western, open societies - and you see how closely it dovetails with the development of technology that create stable states rather than free states, I think that should alarm us, and that drove me quite strongly in my work. (...) Before 2013, there were specialists, there were insiders, there were intelligence officers, there were academics and researchers who understood all too well the possibility of mass surveillance. They understood how our technologies and our techniques could be applied to change the world of intelligence gathering from the traditional method - which was, you name a target and you monitor them specifically. You send officers into their homes. They plant a camera or a listening device. You have officers on the street who follow them to meetings, in cars and on foot. It was very expensive. And that created a natural constraint on how much surveillance was done. The rise of technology meant that, now, you could have individual officers who could now easily monitor teams of people and even populations of people - entire movements, across borders, across languages, across cultures - so cheaply that it would happen overnight. (...) I would come to my desk in the morning and all the information was already there. This was the burden of mass surveillance. Now, as I said, specialists knew this was possible, but the public was not aware, broadly [speaking], and those who claimed that it was happening, or even that it was likely to happen, were treated as conspiracy theorists. You were the crazy person [in] the tin foil hat. The unusual uncle at the dinner table. And what 2013 delivered, and what I see the continuation of today, is the transformation of what was once treated as speculation - even if it was informed speculation - to fact. [Nov. 2019, at IDFA]
- [on companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, that track our digital footprints and use algorithms to grab our attention] What is happening is that we are being made prisoner to ghosts. We are being imprisoned by models of [our] past behavior that have been determined by machines. We are being used against the future. Our past actions and activities are being used to limit the potential of human behavior, because decisions are being formed based on past observations and these models of past lives. (...) [This kind of information] must not be misused to decide who gets a job, who gets an education, who gets a loan, who gets [medical] treatment. But if we don't change the direction that we see today, if we allow Facebook and Google and Amazon to pursue these models and to apply these models to every aspect of human decision-making - as they are very, very aggressively striving to [do] today. We will find [that] we have become prisoners of a past that no longer exists. [Nov. 2019, at IDFA]
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