It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders.
A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the diminishing concept of privacy for future generations due to advancements in technology and surveillance.
Edward Snowden's quote reflects a significant concern regarding the erosion of privacy in the digital age. As technology continues to evolve, the experiences and expectations of privacy for those born today will differ drastically from previous generations, leading to a societal shift where the notion of personal privacy may become almost nonexistent. This raises important questions about security, freedom, and the implications of living in a highly monitored world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about data privacy laws, this quote can serve as a powerful reminder of our evolving relationship with privacy.
More from Edward Snowden
All quotes βI think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?
Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are.
I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that.
Similar quotes
If the Net becomes the center of the universe, which is what seems to be happening, then the dizzying array of machines that will be plugged into it will virtually guarantee that the specifics of which chip and which operating system you've got will be irrelevant.
The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
The EU can lead the world toward more humane technology. But doing so requires thinking more broadly about reining in social media platforms to prevent them from degrading our democracies.
I don't condone anyone causing damage in my name, or doing anything malicious in support of my plight. There are more productive ways to help me. As a hacker myself, I never intentionally damaged anything.
YouTube has a hundred engineers who are trying to get the perfect next video to play automatically. And their techniques are only going to get more and more perfect over time, and we will have to resist the perfect.
What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.