My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.
The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American.
I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.
The internet is the most complex system that humans have ever invented. And with every internet enabled operation that we’ve seen so far, all of these offensive operations, we see knock on effects. We see unintended consequences.
If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public.
Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.
I don’t want to hide. If I get arrested, I get arrested.
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.
The US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.
It’s important to remember when you start doing things like attacking hospitals through the internet, when you start attacking things like internet exchange points, when something goes wrong, people can die. If a hospital’s infrastructure is affected, lifesaving equipment turns off.
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, unanalysed 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.
I do not expect to see home again.
And that’s not something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build and it’s not something I’m willing to live under.
Defending ourselves from internet-based attacks, internet-originated attacks, is much, much more important than our ability to launch attacks against similar targets in foreign countries.
I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.
Truth is coming and it cannot be stopped.
I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.