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.
Edward SnowdenRead
You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the extent of government surveillance and the lack of public awareness regarding privacy invasions.
Edward Snowden's quote reveals the alarming reality of government surveillance, particularly by the NSA, emphasizing how pervasive and invasive monitoring of individuals' online activities has become. It underscores a profound disconnection between the capabilities of state surveillance and the general public's understanding of such invasion, prompting serious discussions about privacy, consent, and the ethics of surveillance in the modern digital age.
Themes
SurveillancePrivacyGovernmentAwarenessTechnology
In practice
Example use cases
During a public talk on privacy rights, I quoted Edward Snowden to emphasize the need for transparency in surveillance practices.
More from Edward Snowden
All quotes →I 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.
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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?
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A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
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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.
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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.
Edward SnowdenRead
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