I’m still working for the government.
Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn’t feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.
The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual, even without the government having any intent to do you wrong.
Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.
Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world. I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.
When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose.
Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.
Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.
We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.
One of the foremost activities of the NSA’s FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.
We need to think about encryption not as this sort of arcane, black art. It’s a basic protection.
Let’s put it this way. The United States government has assembled a massive investigation team into me personally, into my work with the journalists, and they still have no idea what documents were provided to the journalist, what they have, what they don’t have, because encryption works.
Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain.
All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.
You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.
When Clapper raised his hand and lied to the American public, was anyone tried? Were any charges brought? Within 24 hours of going public, I had three charges against me.
The most important thing to the United States is not being able to attack our adversaries, the most important thing is to be able to defend ourselves. And we can’t do that as long as we’re subverting our own security standards for the sake of surveillance.
The United States need to put internet processes, policies, and procedures in place with real laws that forbid going beyond the borders of what’s reasonable to ensure that the only time that we and other countries around the world exercise these authorities are when it is absolutely necessary.
The majority of terrorist attacks that have been disrupted in the United States have been disrupted due to things like the Time Square bomber, who was caught by a hotdog vendor, not a mass surveillance program, not a cyber-espionage campaign.