Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.
It’s critical how we want to use these spy programs, these electronic capabilities, where we want to draw the line, and who should approve these programs, these decisions, and at what level, for engaging in operations that could lead us as a nation into a war.
We don’t have to ask for our privacy, we can take it back.
What is right is not always the same as what is legal.
A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
When you use any kind of internet based capability, any kind of electronic capability, to cause damage to a private entity or a foreign nation or a foreign actor, these are potential acts of war.
I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.
I would rather be without a state than without a voice.
I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.
There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny – they should be setting the example of transparency.
I don’t want the stage. I’m terrified of giving these talking heads some distraction, some excuse to jeopardize, smear, and delegitimize a very important movement.
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 care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can’t allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I’m not going to be part of that.
When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights.
You can’t come up against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk.
The public don’t want to authorize the internet to become a battleground. We need to do everything we can as a society to keep that a neutral zone, to keep that an economic zone that can reflect our values, both politically, socially, and economically.
The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.
My perspective is if you’re not willing to be called a few names to help out your country, you don’t care enough.
America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.
If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.