A Quote by Edward Snowden

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance.

Edward Snowden

Quote Topics

Activities Affairs Change Division Enable EU Fad Foreign Foreign Affairs Foremost Laws Mass Member Nsa Pressure States Surveillance

Quote Author

Edward Snowden
American - Activist
Born: June 21, 1983

Many of our ally states don't have these constitutional protections - in the UK, in New Zealand, in Australia. They've lost the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. All of those countries, in the wake of these surveillance revelations, rushed through laws that were basically ghostwritten by the National Security Agency to enable mass surveillance without court oversight, without all of the standard checks and balances that one would expect.

Edward Snowden

Someone recently talked about mass surveillance and the NSA revelations as being the atomic moment for computer scientists. The atomic bomb was the moral moment for physicists. Mass surveillance is the same moment for computer scientists, when they realize that the things they produce can be used to harm a tremendous number of people.

Edward Snowden

Over the longer term, the institutions and powers of the EU will continue to expand and certain policymaking powers, heretofore vested in the member states, will be delegated or transferred to, or pooled and shared with EU institutions. As a result, the sovereignty of the member states will increasingly be eroded.

David Cameron

Germany's potential makes up about 20% of the EU's overall economic power, including Great Britain. The German army is by no means strong enough to guarantee the security of the EU's two endangered flanks - in the east and in the south. So all that remains for Germany is partnerships with its neighbours and other EU member states. Germany should stick to that role.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski

[Bill] Binney designed ThinThread, an NSA program that used encryption to try to make mass surveillance less objectionable. It would still have been unlawful and unconstitutional.

Edward Snowden

We have to call mass surveillance mass surveillance. We can't let governments around the world redefine, and sort of weasel their way out of it by saying this is bulk collection.

Edward Snowden

There is no better illustration of that crisis than the fact that the president is openly violating our nation's laws by authorizing the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.

John Conyers

Though foreign loans are indispensable for the emancipation of the rising capitalist states, they are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their influence, exercise financial control, and exert pressure on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states.

Rosa Luxemburg

The public affairs of the union are spread throughout a very extensive region, and are extremely diversified by the local affairs connected with them, and can with difficulty be learnt in any other place, than in the central councils, to which a knowledge of them will be brought by the representatives of every part of the empire. Yet some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the states, ought to be possessed by the members from each of the states.

James Madison

Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers.

Edward Snowden

Why doesn't anyone address the substantive question of why other states blatantly interfere in Israel's internal affairs? Israel does not meddle in the affairs of other states in a similar way, so why do other countries feel entitled to do this to Israel? These actions violate Israeli sovereignty and I expect European Union member states to act differently.

Ayelet Shaked

The [EU] Council of Ministers will have far more power over the budgets of member states than the federal government in the United States has over the budget of Texas.

Jean-Claude Trichet

You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening.

Edward Snowden

No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

Glenn Greenwald

If a president can change some laws, can he change ALL laws? Can he change election laws? Can he change discrimination laws? Are there any laws, under your theory, that he actually HAS to enforce?