Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes

Federal prosecutors want to indict Julian Assange for making public a great many classified documents.

What Edward Snowden did amounted to the greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of my nation.

No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to give them to the people than he would have to filch another man's property off a taxicab seat. The Government, of course, commonly leaks classified documents when it deems publication convenient to manipulate public opinion to its advantage. Only the Government, it seems, has a legal right to manipulate opinion with hot documents.

The Snowden leaks were important – a legitimate scoop – and we might never have known about the NSA’s law breaking if it had not been for them.

Regarding Wikileaks, I have profound ambivalent feelings about it. I am a firm believer in a strong intelligence service. There's a need for classified information.

There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.

It seems like WikiLeaks has better information on Hillary Clinton than she does herself.

RT was one of the first channels to cover the Wikileaks story and to interview Julian Assange a long time ago, way before it made headlines around the globe.

[Chelsea] Manning leaked more than 700,000 classified files and videos to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy.

Leaking of classified material is a concern.

Why do we even need WikiLeaks? They're not the only organization that publishes leaks. And they don't have some special technology that allows them to post on the Internet with mirrored sites. The idea of WikiLeaks lives on, but as an organization, it's become increasingly irrelevant.

Mr. Snowden did not start out as a spy, and calling him one bends the term past recognition. Spies don't give their secrets to journalists for free.

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone.

I thought it was a classic David and Goliath story, and I was fully onboard Team WikiLeaks. I was very pro the leaks, barring the redaction issue. But I see WikiLeaks as a publisher.

I'm a freedom of information campaigner, so obviously I support the cause of Wikileaks.

WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.

In a film muddied by fictional detail, the new Spielberg production 'Fifth Estate''s portrayal of the 'Guardian''s work with Wikileaks is accurate in describing the running dispute between journalists who wanted to redact documents to make them safe and Julian Assange, who wanted no such restraint.

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

Wikileaks didn't help confidence with American administrations because of conversations made public so easily.

An obsession with secrecy persists in leading industrial countries.

The United States is the only country in the world that has ever released the operations files of its intelligence agency.

We would not have a national discussion without the actions of Edward Snowden. Democracy is at work because of Edward Snowden.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

I think America is less safe on a lot fronts, and I disagree with the release of the information from Dianne Feinstein. I think she's as much a traitor to this country at this point as I thought about Edward Snowden and his release of information about other investigations and abilities from an intelligence standpoint.