Edward Snowden Quotes

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.

There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for 'continuous situational awareness' and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.

Governments in countries across the world have a duty to do everything possible to keep the public safe from terrorist attacks.

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

The intelligence activities undertaken by the United States government are lawful, necessary and required to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

When we have some horrible terrorist attacks happen in some country we see in the recording that follows, that the intelligence community already knew about these people in advance. We know that these countries were involved in intelligence sharing premiums, that they benefited from mass surveillance, and yet they didn't stop the attacks. Yet at the same time we immediately see intelligence officials running to the newspapers and claiming that we need more surveillance, that we need more intrusion, that we need more expense of powers because it could have stopped an attack.

If Senator Rubio were doing his job and in Congress more, he might know that the program 'phone records of a potential terrorist cause' continues. It's been ongoing for the last six months. So the Paris tragedy, this tragedy happened while we were still doing bulk collection, all bulk collection. Also in France, they have a program a thousand-fold more invasive, collecting all of the data of all of the French.

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.

We have no idea how much the government knows and how much the CIA even knows about average citizens. The government is not supposed to be doing this in this country. They listen in on our phone calls. I am not exaggerating because I have studied this a long time.

We knew that al-Qaida was a threat to our country. We knew that the Clinton administration understood this and was working against al-Qaida We did not ignore al-Qaida. We spent a lot of our time thinking about terrorism, what should we do about it.

Shannen Rossmiller's work in exposing Islamic terrorists has genuinely made our country safer. She has dedicated her life to combating the terrorist threat against the United States and has amazingly been able to infiltrate and actually stop terrorist operations. Our entire country owes her an immeasurable debt of gratitude.

I'm glad that the NSA is trying to find out what the terrorists are up to overseas and in our country. I'm glad that activity is going on, but it is limited to tracking people who are suspected to be terrorists and who they may be talking to... Yes, I am sure that that's what they're doing.

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.

We all know what we mean by fighting terrorism. In reality, there is total cooperation between the countries north and south of the Mediterranean against terrorism.

The people at the NSA aren't trying to ruin your life. They're not trying to put you in authoritarian dystopia. These are normal people trying to do good work in hard circumstances.

I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.

What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it.

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.

We need American Muslims to be part of our eyes and ears on our front lines.

We took out the safe haven in Afghanistan, but now there is, undoubtedly, a larger safe haven and we must rise to this occasion in collaboration and with alliances to confront it, and invest in the future much better human intelligence so we know what the next steps are.

From the first day I took the decision as President to defend my country. So, who killed ? That's another question. Actually, the terrorists have been killing our people since the beginning of this crisis two years and a half ago, and the Syrian people wanted the government and the state institutions and the army and the police to defend them, and that's what happened.

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.

To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda... All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way - they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

I'm very grateful that Barack Obama as president very much put protection of privacy on the agenda today, due to the fact of Islamist terrorism all over the world.