Edward Snowden Quotes
There was a real choice when [Barack Obama] became president. It was a very difficult choice - to say, "We're not going to hold senior officials to account with the same laws that every other citizen in the country is held to," or "This is a nation that believes in the rule of law."
Snowden, Edward. Citizenfour. Directed by Laura Poitras, Radius-TWC, 2014.
At the time many of the powerful and influential upper class felt that some of the laws did not necessarily apply to them or their corporations. They bribed legislators to change laws when they were inconvenient to ignore. Roosevelt was the first President to take them on.
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.