Edward Snowden Quotes

When we look at the full-on mass surveillance watching everyone in the country, in the United States, it doesn't work. It didn't stop the attacks in Boston. The marathon bombings. Where again, we knew who these individuals were. It didn't stop the Underwear Bomber, whose father walked into an embassy and warned us about this individual before he walked onto an airplane. And it's not going to stop the next attacks either. Because again, they're not public safety programmes. They're spying programmes. They are valuable for spying.

Enhanced interrogation gleaned information that saved American lives and - I was informed - prevented incoming terrorist attacks on this country from being successful.

In the United States the White House has appointed two different independent panels who had full access to classified information for the last 10 years that master balance has been in place in the United States, and they found that despite intercepting the calls - everybody in the country, - it had never stopped a single terrorist attack. So the question is, why would these officials be pursuing these policies, if we know they don't work, if they don't stop terrorism?

Am I worried about additional attacks in this country? Of course I'm worried about it. We expect the American people to go on living their lives as normally as possible. But it is a post-9/11 world, and the United States government is doing everything we can do to ensure that another terrorist attack does not occur here in this country.

What I'm OK with is protecting the American people. What I'm OK with is, when people have the intent to come to this country and take American lives, that we are prepared to do what's necessary to gain the information to protect the people of this country.

Should any terrorist strike or act of war occur in which American lives are lost, we must be on guard for any attempt by the government to turn that tragedy into justification for sweeping action.

President Trump has no higher priority than the safety and security of the American people. And he made it clear in this election, particularly in the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris where individuals had used a refugee program to gain access to that country.

I promise you, the next time there is attack on - an attack on this country, the first thing people are going to want to know is, why didn't we know about it and why didn't we stop it? And the answer better not be because we didn't have access to records or information that would have allowed us to identify these killers before they attacked.

Once we got hit by - on 9/11 and lost 3,000 people that day, we recognized, and it was one of the key decisions President Bush made, that this is not a law enforcement problem, it is a strategic threat to the United States. It's a war. And based on that, we then adopted a whole set of policies that flowed out of that proposition.

Coalition [against ISIS] need the tools. And the tools involve encryption where we cannot hear what they're even planning. And when we see red flags, a father, a mother, a neighbor who says we have got a problem here, then we have to give law enforcement the ability to listen so they can disrupt these terrorist attacks before they occur.

Look at it this way: this administration is taking unprecedented steps to make sure that the government's secrets remain private while simultaneously invading the privacy of its citizens... Many innocents must be violated so that a few guilty people can be stopped. It's a digital stop-and-frisk.

Now, as far as monitoring is concerned, what my point is, we need to make sure that any place - I don't care whether it's a mosque, a school, a supermarket, a theater, you know it doesn't matter. If there are a lot of people getting there and engaging in radicalizing activities then we need to be suspicious of it.

Years ago, even prior to 9/11, I did a movie called "The Siege." I did a lot of research with the FBI and the CIA. And I was amazed at that time (I guess we might all know it now) how little information they shared with each other. So after that, I'm not surprised by anything.

People aren't blind. They know - they want to have a country where people who are coming in are known to our authorities, those who are in charge of this.

By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act.

There's no way to avoid a burden on your freedom. The costs themselves are a burden on your freedom. The restrictions that are necessary in order to get rid of the terrorists are a burden to your freedom. So there's no way in the short run to avoid a restriction on your freedom.

When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry.

The government has investigated our program of collecting through a generalized fashion, everyone's phone records in the country. And they found that no terrorist case has been thwarted through this.

Terrorism is an immediate problem that people are very concerned about, and I am as concerned about that as anyone else. But it isn't an either or situation.

I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: We are going to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We will not be deterred from this course, and in a matter of days, we will be taking brand new action to protect out people and keep America safe. You will see the action.

It's an all-inclusive package, when you get to be creative and run a little country while you're on a set and doing it with people that you enjoy working with and you all have a say in it.

I was appointed U.S. attorney by President [George] Bush on September 10th, 2001, and the world changed enormously the next day, and that happened in my state.I will make no apologies, ever, for protecting the lives and the safety of the American people. We have to give more tools to our folks to be able to do that, not fewer, and then trust those people and oversee them to do it the right way.

We will not be able to meet the challenges of integration and the threats posed by international terrorism. If we want to prevent attacks, we'll need more information and better integration.

[Donald Trump] is talked about enormous loss that we've had in this country by allowing radical Islamic extremists to run rampant without having a coherent plan for how to destroy them, not just to contain them, but to destroy them. And the implications of that for all families who are losing service members is significant.