Edward Snowden Quotes

• “Privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” — “Snowden Sends Christmas Message To USA,” Dec. 25, 2013

• “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.” — Edward Snowden’s “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit, May 21, 2015

• “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.” — “Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions,” Oct. 3, 2014

• “I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.” — “Edward Snowden: ‘The US government will say I aided our enemies,’” July 8, 2013

On the future:

• “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.” — “Snowden Sends Christmas Message To USA,” Dec. 25, 2013

• “The tide has turned, and we can finally see a future where we can enjoy security without sacrificing our privacy. Our rights cannot be limited by a secret organization … Even the defenders of mass surveillance, those who may not be persuaded that our surveillance technologies have dangerously outpaced democratic controls, now agree that in democracies, surveillance of the public must be debated by the public.”  — “An Open Letter to the People of Brazil,” Dec. 17, 2013

• “The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.” — “Snowden Sends Christmas Message To USA,” Dec. 25, 2013

Edward Snowden: Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second.

Edward Snowden: We are building the biggest weapon for oppression in the history of mankind.