Edward Snowden Quotes

Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.

Preventing terrorist attacks is of the highest important, but trashing the Constitution is not the right way to do it.

For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.

That's not how national security works... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens!

How will we defend ourselves if the Patriot Act expires? Well, perhaps we could just rely on the Constitution and demonstrate exactly how traditional judicial warrants can gather all the info we need - and how bulk collection really hasn't worked.

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.

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 want to make it clear … that America is not interested in spying on ordinary citizens.

The Obama administration has framed its defense of the controversial bulk collection of all American phone records as necessary to prevent a future 9/11.

There's still a lot of things you can legitimately do to make America safe through electronic surveillance.

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights.

Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society. We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.

We do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there's no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don't recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways.

Nobody ever was fired for 9/11. Instead of firing the people who didn't do a good job, we gave them medals. The guy who did a good job, I don't know what happened to him. And what we did was we decided we'd just collect everybody's information. That we'd sort of scrap the Bill of Rights.

It urges policy makers and the Supreme Court to make the mistake of curing what could prove to be an isolated problem by disarming the government of its principal weapon to stop future terrorist attacks.

I think all members of Congress are very concerned about the fact that, while we want to see our law enforcement agencies have every means they can possibly have to combat terrorism, we've got to remember that we've had a Constitution in place for 225 years, and it has served us well.

Snowden has yet to tell me anything that was a fact that I have been able to rebut or that anybody in the U.S. government I have talked to has been able to rebut.

The Patriot Act is ludicrous. Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total genocide, not subtle little hacks of the U.S. infrastructure, yet the government wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone's communications.

Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.

I believe that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be reformed. We must improve the American public's confidence in, and perception of, our national security programs, by increasing transparency, strengthening oversight, and safeguarding civil liberties.

The Patriot Act addresses various subjects. Some sections are beneficial and enhance our national security.

We will use all lawful tools at our disposal, and that includes authorities under the renewed PATRIOT Act. We firmly believe that our intelligence gathering tools must enable us to collect the information we need to protect the American people.

I certainly respect privacy and privacy rights. But on the other hand, the first function of government is to guarantee the security of all the people.

Bringing an end to mass government surveillance needs to be a central pillar of returning to the principles we have put in jeopardy in the early 21st century.