It's important to remember when you start doing things like attacking hospitals through the internet, when you start attacking things like internet exchange points, when something goes wrong, people can die. If a hospital's infrastructure is affected, lifesaving equipment turns off.
Edward SnowdenWhat we're seeing now, or starting to see, is an atomization of the Internet community. Before, everybody went only to a few sites; now we've got all these boutiques.
Edward SnowdenWe don't have a great clash of civilizations, a clash of ideologies, a clash of alternative models, where governments thought to themselves, if we go too far, if we sort of trample unreasonably on rights, we'll give birth to a political movement which will cost us our credibility, and will possibly cost us our offices, because people will vote for the other team, the other guys.
Edward SnowdenThe public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the 'consent of the governed' is meaningless... The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
Edward SnowdenWhen you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
Edward SnowdenIf even one country, an Iceland for example, defects from this global legislative bargain and says no, we're not going to enforcement mass surveillance here. We're not going to do that. That's where all of the data centres, all the service providers in the world will relocate to. And I think that gives us a real chance to see a more liberal than authoritarian future.
Edward Snowden