The effect of that is to poison the flow of information to the President himself and to create a situation where a President can be almost, to use a metaphor, psychotically divorced from the realities in which he is acting.
Daniel EllsbergRead
I see Edward Snowden as someone who has chosen, at best, exile from the country he loves-with a serious risk of his assassination by agents of his government or life in prison (in solitary confinement)-to awaken us to the danger of our loss of democracy to a total-surveilla nce state
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the sacrifices made by Edward Snowden for the sake of democracy and warns against government surveillance.
This quote highlights the profound risks Edward Snowden took when he exposed government surveillance practices. By choosing to flee his home, he aimed to alert society about the dangers of losing democracy to pervasive surveillance, emphasizing the moral dilemma of prioritizing personal safety over the collective good.
Themes
Edward SnowdenSurveillanceDemocracySacrificeFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about civil liberties during a public debate on surveillance laws.
More from Daniel Ellsberg
All quotes →There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.
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I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.
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EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.
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If there's another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country.
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We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.
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