Edward Snowden Quotes
Anyway, it's not true that the authorities cannot access the content of the phone even if there is no back door. When I was at the NSA, we did this every single day, even on Sundays. I believe that encryption is a civic responsibility, a civic duty.
Snowden, Edward. Keynote Address. Blueprint for a Great Democracy Conference, Common Cause, 8 Mar. 2016.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.
See {635177} for the event that triggered the statement.
He had developed a mathematical algorithm for a computer encryption that would take years to break even for the most powerful supercomputers. The U. S. Government tried to prevent him from publishing the technique and formula, but he went ahead anyway. They then tried to accuse him of violating an Arms Export Control Act for allowing people in other countries to see it, but there were no legal grounds for indictment. The strong encryption method, PGP, can be used with almost any PC and internet transmission of files.
Here is an example of the mental set of NSA regarding electronically capturing information. It is easy to see why the agency got into a position where they were castigated by groups throughout America for the large scale gathering of even Private communications.
the name of the judge or senator XXKEYSTORE is an NSA Secret Database. This quotation is very important because after Snowden had stolen some secret files to disclose the CIA practices to the Congress and public, many of the NSA and other government officials stated that Snowden was a very low level person. They accused him of aggrandizing his role and importance to the agency. The also claimed that NSA only captures meta data, not the data content of the documents or messages they intercept. Snowden’s quote casts suspicion on the first and belies the second. If Snowden were such a low level employee, why did he have access to the data base that stores the content of the e-mail (and attachments) of the Congress and many other public officials. For the second, if only meta data was captured and stored, how could Snowden see the e-mails which he then disclosed to the press.
The FBI had obtained a court order requiring apple to write software that could hack into a person's iPhone. Apple, with most other hi-tech companies in support, filed a motion with the court opposing the order. The FBI shortly thereafter withdrew its request for the order saying that they had found other solutions, when they had originally told the court that there were no other solutions.
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Edward Joseph Snowden is a former computer intelligence consultant who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
