The United States is probably the only advanced democracy in the world that does not have a basic privacy law. - Edward Snowden

If you love the truth, as I think everyone here does — you wouldn’t be listening to this, you wouldn’t be watching this, you wouldn’t be participating in this, you wouldn’t care about this, unless something in you told you that something important was happening here... We are unindicted co-conspirators in his quest to raise a lantern in the halls of power.

When you first enter on duty at the CIA, they take you in a dark room. It’s a very solemn ceremony. You raise your hand and say, you know, "I," — state your name, whatever — "do solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." They talk about the oath of secrecy. There is no oath of secrecy. There is a Standard Form 312, classified nondisclosure agreement... that you sign, which is what they’re actually referring to, but it's not an oath.... you do take this oath of service, as they describe it... What happens when you have conflicting obligations? On one hand, you’re supposed to keep these secrets of government... The fact that the government is breaking the law is itself a secret. But when the government's lawbreaking is a violation of the Constitution that you entered into duty to uphold, what then do you do? ...I talked to my colleagues. I talked to my bosses.... Many of them agreed that it was wrong, but they said, "You know, it’s not my job to fix it. It’s not your job, either." ...Everybody knew the government was going to be extremely unhappy... But, for me, I felt that I had an obligation to do this. And so I gathered information that I believed was evidence of unlawful or unconstitutional activities.

My greatest fear was that no one would listen to my warning. Never have I been so glad to have been so wrong. The reaction in certain countries has been particularly inspiring to me... At the NSA, I witnessed with growing alarm the surveillance of whole populations without any suspicion of wrongdoing, and it threatens to become the greatest human rights challenge of our time. The NSA and other spying agencies... have revoked our right to privacy and broken into our lives. And they did it without asking the public in any country, even their own. Today, if you carry a cell phone in Sao Paolo, the NSA can and does keep track of your location... When someone in Florianopolis visits a website, the NSA keeps a record of when it happened and what you did there... They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation. There is a huge difference between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement — where individuals are targeted based on a reasonable, individualized suspicion — and these programs of dragnet mass surveillance that put entire populations under an all-seeing eye... These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power.