Edward Snowden Thinking Quotations

We need to think about encryption not as this sort of arcane, black art. It's a basic protection.

There are times throughout history and it doesn't take long for either an American or a German, to think about times in the history of their country where the law provided the Government to do things which were not right.

When people conceptualize a cyber-attack, they do tend to think about parts of the critical infrastructure like power plants, water supplies, and similar sort of heavy infrastructure, critical infrastructure areas. And they could be hit, as long as they're network connected, as long as they have some kind of systems that interact with them that could be manipulated from internet connection.

I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance.

Cyber Command is supposed to be defending our critical infrastructure at home, but they are spending so much time looking at how to attack networks, how to break systems, and how to turn things off. I don't think it adds up as representing a defensive team.

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.

No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.

If I am traitor, who did I betray? I gave all my information to the American public, to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason, I think people really need to consider who they think they're working for. The public is supposed to be their boss, not their enemy.

There's no question that the US is engaged in economic spying. If there's information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security of the United States, they'll go after that information and they'll take it.