Edward Snowden Quotes

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.

The people have a right to know—no, a duty to know—what the army is doing in our name.

We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance on its citizens.

Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.

It's my father's legacy. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to.

WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire U.S. government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.

We simply cannot afford to allow our government to go unscrutinised, most of all in amid the bleak seeming imperatives of the 'war on terror'.

Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.

The people have the right to know what their Agents are doing or have done, and it should not be in the option of the Legislature to conceal their proceedings.

Can the public business be thus transacted and in secret?

Access to government-held information allows citizens to hold their government accountable for policy decisions and public expenditures…. Access to information bridges the gap between state and society ….

Government is the creature of the people, and that which they have created they surely have a right to examine.

The public must know about the general outlines of surveillance activities in order to evaluate whether the government is achieving the appropriate balance between privacy and security.

I believe that the American People have a right to know what was done in their name..

Although governments will also benefit from improved access to information, increased transparency will allow people at home and abroad to better observe and critique what governments do and to hold leaders accountable for their decisions. As a result, governments will find it harder to adopt strategies that require secrecy or violate international norms.

I know of no government official who would welcome an army of inspectors general combing through four years of emails on their unclassified accounts. That's why they use government accounts, where the government remains responsible for security, and they don't mingle personal correspondence with official.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

I think most people accept that it is necessary to have some surveillance in a democratic society. I think most people accept that it's important to have limits and clear safeguards on that.

The only way we are held accountable is if people know what government is doing.

Do we have the right to understand the world we live in? The right to all the information regarding why our governments are making the decisions that they are?

The more government transparency, the better.

As the Director of the FBI, I am committed to ensuring that the Bureau is being transparent and responsive to legitimate congressional requests.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

Our public officials have forgotten that they are ultimately accountable to the people who put them in office, that the information they keep in secrecy belongs to all of us. Julian Assange took a courageous step by rightfully returning what belongs to the public domain. For that reason, I believe we need to stand behind him.