Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph "Ed" Snowdenis an American computer professional, former Central Intelligence Agencyemployee, and former contractor for the United States government who copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agencyin 2013 without prior authorization. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionOther
Date of Birth21 June 1983
CityElizabeth City, NC
CountryUnited States of America
What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?
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.
The public don't want to authorize the internet to become a battleground. We need to do everything we can as a society to keep that a neutral zone, to keep that an economic zone that can reflect our values, both politically, socially, and economically.
I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things.
I don't want to hide. If I get arrested, I get arrested.
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.
Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.
Privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be,
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.
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.
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.
You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.
Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.
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.