All the governments just want to have more power when it comes to economic espionage, diplomatic manipulation and political influence.
I wasn't trying to change the laws or slow down the machine. Maybe I should have. My critics say that I was not revolutionary enough. But they forget that I am a product of the system. I worked those desks, I know those people and I still have some faith in them, that the services can be reformed.
You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.
A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.
I don't think I have committed a crime outside the domain of the US.
They [the authorities] will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night.
Americans hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.
We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.
In America, we collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.
Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People's Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech.
We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism.
As inequality grows, the basic bonds of social fraternity are fraying - as we discussed in regard to Occupy Wall Street. As tensions increase, people will become more willing to engage in protest. But that moment is not now.
I don't want to directly confront great powers, which we cannot defeat on their terms. They have more money, more clout, more airtime. We cannot be effective without a mass movement, and the American people today are too comfortable to adapt to a mass movement.
I have a somewhat sneaky way of effecting political change.
Using the language of heroism, calling Daniel Ellsberg a hero, and calling the other people who made great sacrifices heroes - even though what they have done is heroic - is to distinguish them from the civic duty they performed, and excuses the rest of us from the same civic duty to speak out when we see something wrong, when we witness our government engaging in serious crimes, abusing power, engaging in massive historic violations of the Constitution of the United States. We have to speak out or we are party to that bad action.
As for labeling someone a whistleblower, I think it does them - it does all of us - a disservice, because it "otherizes" us.
You are also asked to take an oath, and that's the oath of service. The oath of service is not to secrecy, but to the Constitution - to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That's the oath that I kept, that James Clapper and former NSA director Keith Alexander did not. You raise your hand and you take the oath in your class when you are on board. All government officials are made to do it who work for the intelligence agencies - at least, that's where I took the oath.
People sometimes say I broke an oath of secrecy - one of the early charges leveled against me. But it's a fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no oath of secrecy for people who work in the intelligence community. You are asked to sign a civil agreement, called a Standard Form 312, which basically says if you disclose classified information, they can sue you; they can do this, that and the other. And you risk going to jail.
You're not patriotic just because you back whoever's in power today or their policies. You're patriotic when you work to improve the lives of the people of your country, your community and your family. Sometimes that means making hard choices, choices that go against your personal interest.
As I said before, [patriotism] is distinct from acting to benefit the government - a distinction that's increasingly lost today.
What defines patriotism, for me, is the idea that one rises to act on behalf of one's country.
What I wanted to do was give society the information it needed to decide if it wanted to change the system.
It also comes down to parenting. It is important to know what your beliefs are, and that you have to stand up for them or you don't really believe in them. You know, my father and mother - in fact, every member of my immediate family - have worked for the federal government. Sometimes misunderstood is that I didn't stand up to overthrow the system.
I considered bringing forward information about these surveillance programs prior to the election, but I held off because I believed that [Barack] Obama was genuine when he said he was going to change things. I wanted to give the democratic process time to work.
Candidates run for election on campaign promises, but once they're elected they renege on those promises, which happened with President [Barack] Obama on Guantánamo, the surveillance programs and investigating the crimes of the Bush administration. These were very serious campaign promises that were not fulfilled.
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