A political decision has been made not to irritate the intelligence community. The spy agencies are really embarrassed, they're really sore - the revelations really hurt their mystique. The last ten years, they were getting the Zero Dark Thirty treatment - they're the heroes. The surveillance revelations bring them back to Big Brother kind of narratives, and they don't like that at all.
Edward SnowdenYou have to remember the way the internet works, when you communicate with the server, it's very likely not in your country. It's somewhere else in the world.
Edward SnowdenIt's much more important for U.S. to be able to defend against foreign attacks than it is to be able to launch successful attacks against foreign adversaries.
Edward SnowdenI hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party...this is not socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad.
Edward SnowdenThe government doesn't want us to know what they're doing, how they're interpreting the law, how they're interpreting and redefining their powers, and increasingly, how they're redefining the boundaries of our rights and our liberties, broadly, socially, and categorically without our involvement.
Edward Snowden