Edward Snowden Quotes

The internet is shared critical infrastructure for everyone on earth. It's not supposed to be a domain of warfare. We're not supposed to be putting the Unied States' economy on the frontlines in the battleground.

When it comes to the internet, when it comes to the United States' technical economy, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.

I think we need to get to the bottom of it. And I think there should be an investigation [of hackers attacks] because in order to defend ourselves against other adversarial countries, we have to protect our information.

US spend more on research and development than the other countries, so we shouldn't be making the internet a more hostile, a more aggressive territory.

Terrorism in the country will not be tolerated at any cost.

As individuals and as a nation we have become dependent on a vast digital infrastructure. That, in turn, has made us vulnerable to cybercriminals and foreign adversaries that target that infrastructure.

Essentially, it's not that technology or cyberspace is some parallel universe that operates tangentially from the world we know; it is simply a new front in the international system.

Out of any country on the planet, I can't think of a country that has been more focused than Iran from the high levels of government on cyber, and that includes the United States.

As soon as I enter office I am going to ask Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to begin a comprehensive review of these cases in order to develop a list of regions and countries from which immigration must be suspended until proven and effective vetting mechanisms can be put in place.

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe.

Here at home, we need to do two fundamental things. Number one, we need to recognize that technology has moved on. The Patriot Act was signed in 2001, roughly. The iPhone was invented in 2007. The iPad was invented in 2011. Snapchat and Twitter, all the rest of it, have been around just for several years. Technology has moved on, and the terrorists have moved on with it.

The United States need to put internet processes, policies, and procedures in place with real laws that forbid going beyond the borders of what's reasonable to ensure that the only time that we and other countries around the world exercise these authorities are when it is absolutely necessary.

When you talk about the security and safety of average Americans it doesn't do average Americans a lot of good to expand America's military footprint if the daily lives of average Americans are being undermined by the fact that we're no longer able to compete in a global economy. I think that's the kind of human security we have to pay more attention to.

I don't want anyone hacking us. And I'm not only talking about countries. I'm talking about anyone, period.

The United States need to be focusing more on creating a more secure, more reliable, more robust, and more trusted internet, not one that's weaker, not one that relies on this systemic model of exploiting every vulnerability, every threat out there.

Stalin’s postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order.

Bob Mueller for the FBI, myself, met with a particular group of executives that have major roles in the so-called ISPs, the Internet service providers, what they could possibly do. We have met with leaders in private industry in terms of the core critical infrastructure of the country as to what they can possibly do with cyber-attacks.

Cyber security will be an issue that I will be absolutely focused on as president. Because whether it's Russia, or China, Iran or North Korea more and more countries are using hacking to steal our information, to use it to their advantage. And we can't let that go on.

"Don't you want to abolish state power?" Yes, we do, but not right now. We cannot do it yet. Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist in our country. Our present task is to strengthen the people's state apparatus - mainly the people's army, the people's police and the people's courts - in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people's interests.

[Computer viruses] switch from one country to another, from one jurisdiction to another - moving around the world, using the fact that we don't have the capability to globally police operations like this. So the Internet is as if someone [had] given free plane tickets to all the online criminals of the world.

Terrorist threats are not happening just in this country, but in every European country and every country across the globe. As a result of that, we do sometimes have to take measures we would rather not take in order to give us the security we need.

If the United States is promoting the development of exploits, of vulnerabilities, of insecurity in this critical infrastructure, and we're not fixing it when we find it, instead we put it on the shelf so we can use it the next time we want to launch an attack against some foreign country. We're leaving ourselves at risk.

It's much easier, I think, to protect communications while they're in transit at least, than it is to enforce legislation in every country in the world to say that you can't do this.

Now, many Americans fear that China might grow too strong ... I'm more worried that America might be getting too weak. It's not bad for the United States if other nations have a strong economy. One fewer hungry-mouthed country wanting us to take care of it and its people is great news. If they have money, maybe they will buy the things we innovate and make.

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing.