Edward Snowden Quotes

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

I found it was remarkable. It was so evocative. I feel like it captured the urgency and the chaos, but through the silence of it, through the slowness of it. That's what I loved the most about Citizenfour.

Documentarian Laura Poitras has crafted a first-rate Hitchcockian-type thriller telling the story of Edward Snowden.

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago.

They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they're coming from, and they have no idea where they're going. And if that's the case, how can we, as the public, trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?

What we do with the information now is up to us, but certainly I have a lot of respect for the courage and integrity that was required for [Edard Snowden] to take that action.

Was the leaker in question, Ed Snowden, was he a traitor?

It's interesting in this day and age to do a film about political espionage and wiretapping. I don't think that those types of secrets that J. Edgar Hoover was able to obtain and keep for such a long period of time would be possible in today's world, with the Internet and WikiLeaks.

The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here for some treason.

Clapper has been straight and direct in the answers that he's given, and has actively engaged in an effort to provide more information about the programs that have been revealed through the leak of classified information.

Even the former Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder has come out to say that he believed that [Edward] Snowden performed a public service, and I couldn't agree more.

Given the scope of these programs, it's understandable that many would be concerned about issues related to privacy. But what's difficult to understand is the motivation of somebody who intentionally would seek to warn the nation's enemies of lawful programs created to protect the American people. And I hope that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

There are programs such as the NSA paying RSA $10 million to use an insecure encryption standard by default in their products. That's making us more vulnerable not just to the snooping of our domestic agencies, but also foreign agencies.

For a spy novelist like me, the Edward J. Snowden story has everything. A man driven by ego and idealism - can anyone ever distinguish the two? - leaves his job and his beautiful girlfriend behind. He must tell the world the Panopticon has arrived. His masters vow to punish him, and he heads for Moscow in a desperate search for refuge.

For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.

Edward Snowden may not be a Chinese mole, but he might as well be. He's just handed Beijing a major score, while the NSA struggles to pick up the pieces - and the rest of us pay the price in terms of future national security.

Now all of us can talk to the NSA — just by dialing any number.

In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty.

The Snowden leaks were important – a legitimate scoop – and we might never have known about the NSA’s law breaking if it had not been for them.

I worked with people like Edward Snowden. Well, not people who took stuff home.

A back door is a nonstarter. It means we are all not safe... I don't support a back door for any government, ever.

President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed.

What I believe is that a lot of the NSA's telephone metadata program is the result of misinformation spread by a traitor, Edward Snowden.

It is important to note that Edward Snowden was labeled as a spy not a whistle-blower - even though he exposed the reach of the spy services into the lives of most Americans. More importantly, he was denounced as being part of a generation that unfortunately combined being educated with a distrust of authority.

The [Barack] Obama administration almost appears as though it is afraid of the intelligence community. They're afraid of death by a thousand cuts - you know, leaks and things like that.