Edward Snowden Government Quotations

What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?

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 no contact with the Chinese government. I only work with journalists.

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.

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.

When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists.

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.

While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

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.

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?

Before 2013, if you said the NSA was making records of everybody's phone calls and the [Government Communications Headquarters] was monitoring lawyers and journalists, people raised eyebrows and called you a conspiracy theorist. Those days are over.

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.

I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose,

If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public

I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.

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.

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.

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.

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.

Internet exchanges and internet service providers - international fiber optic landing points - these are the key tools that governments go after in order to enable their programs of mass surveillance. If they want to be able to watch the entire population of a country instead of a single individual, you have to go after those bulk interchanges.

The US government still has no idea what documents I have because encryption works

It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

The reality is if we sit back and allow a few officials behind closed doors to launch offensive attacks without any oversight against foreign nations, against people we don't like, against political groups, radicals, and extremists whose ideas we may not agree with, and could be repulsive or even violent - if we let that happen without public buy-in, we won't have any seat at the table of government to decide whether or not it's appropriate for these officials to drag us into some kind of war activity that we don't want, but we weren't aware of at the time.

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 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.

Our rights are not granted by governments,” Snowden said. “They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world. I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.

If you seek to help, join the open source community and fight to keep the spirit of the press alive and the internet free. I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.

To do that, 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 analyzes 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 that they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting YOUR communications to do so.

Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an e-mail, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace, and the Government has decided that it's good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you've never been suspected of doing a crime.

I have no relationship with the Russian government at all.

The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate.

I'm still working for the government.

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.

So many of the things we're told by the government simply aren't true.

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.

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.

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.

After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power - the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government - for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.