388 Quotes by Edward Snowden

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed

I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.

The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night.

A zero-day exploit is a method of hacking a system. It's sort of a vulnerability that has an exploit written for it, sort of a key and a lock that go together to a given software package. It could be an internet web server. It could be Microsoft Office. It could be Adobe Reader or it could be Facebook.

There's no saving me.

Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,

One journalist said that everybody in Russia is miserable. Russia is a terrible place. And I'm going to end up miserable and I'm going to be a drunk and I'm never going to do anything. I don't drink. I've never been drunk in my life. And they talk about Russia like it's the worst place on earth. Russia's great.