Edward Snowden Quotes

American whistleblower and former NSA contractor (born 1983)

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Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American former technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who leaked details of several top-secret U.S. and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. 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. Snowden came to international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian and The Washington Post. Further disclosures were made by other publications including Der Spiegel and The New York Times. In September 2022, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin.

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Pen Names: TheTrueHOOHA • CITIZENFOUR • VERAX • John Dobbertin

Birth Name: Edward Joseph Snowden

Alternative Names: Ed Snowden • Edward J. Snowden

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Arguing that you don't care about the right to 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.

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.

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

There's good cops out there. I had a lot of interactions with cops as a young man that were nothing but positive. It's not that the police as an idea are the enemy. It is the system is that is rotten... i think even honest cops recognize that the system is fundamentally broken.... There are a lot of cops who've given their lives to stop very bad people... we should honor them... we should provide for their families... but the way that we do that is by providing a better society that's more fair to police by being more fair to everyone... As long as we have an occupation that is invested with extreme authority, they must be invested with an extraordinary standard of accountability. It's that simple from my perspective.... Today in the world of business.. government... policing... anywhere you look it's a common issue. What we have is a disproportionate allocation of influence... of economic resources... a disproportionate allocation of authority without an equal allocation of responsibility. (~2:09:10)

Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, argued that, you know, privacy is dead, that culture's changed, that we don't care about this anymore, that it's not right.

There are no heroes, just heroic decisions

Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year. Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide system of mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information.

Privacy is the right to a free mind.

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.

No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.

And then they sell... or... rent this capability. Facebook says they don't sell data, which is absurd because...they're collecting all of the data and then they're selling... to the highest bidder... what they're selling is access to your eyeballs...access to your mind.... It's you being exploited, and you don't see it happening....

All I can say right now is 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.

The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we've ever seen in history. Now, what they will argue, is that they don't use this for nefarious purposes against American citizens. In some ways, that's true but the real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable to them and then saying, 'well I have a gun pointed at your head. I'm not going to pull the trigger. Trust me.'

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.

And for us to hear that today, to begin with, should just, you know, raise the hairs on the back of our neck a little bit and go, why do we have any rights? What are rights for? If we're in a democracy - right?