A Quote by Edward Snowden
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.
Related Quotes
The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities in American history... The real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable.
Growing up I watched examples of how not to treat people. I knew when I got into certain positions that I wasn't going to talk to people the way that they did. My mindset is, if you want to see the true character of a person watch how they treat those who can't do anything for them.
Nobody thought that I could become a professional. I was not that good. It was really just one thing I had fun doing. But it was never realistic for me to become a professional until I became 17 or maybe 18.
The internet has become such a great tool not just for chefs but for everyone. The net has given everyone the tools to see and almost experience new and different ideas.
The internet is like a surround system, a landscape at its most benign, a closed system of surveillance and self-surveillance at its more sinister. Something we can no longer imagine an outside of.
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.
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and adressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. [...] The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.
Just because something is typed-whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book-this does not mean that it is true.
I watched their reactions and emotions, especially to understand what was what I was doing wrong. But then I realized that if I could see these people and take note of everything I saw, I could write a good song.
The open source nature of the Internet is both a blessing and a curse, because just as much as we can watch what's happening around the world, we can also be watched.
The community of technical experts who really manage the internet, who built the internet and maintain it, are becoming increasingly concerned about the activities of agencies like the NSA or Cyber Command, because what we see is that defense is becoming less of a priority than offense.
As I became a filmmaker and realized that I had a voice, who better to speak for than kids that are bullied? It's such a place where you feel like nobody is listening and you can't communicate what's happening.
I think one of the most shocking things is how little our elected officials knew about what the NSA was doing. Congress is learning from the reporting and that's staggering. Snowden and [former NSA employee] William Binney, who's also in the film as a whistleblower from a different generation, are technical people who understand the dangers.
As digital communications have multiplied, and NSA capabilities with them, the agency has shifted resources from surveillance of individual targets to the acquisition of communications on a planetary scale.
What interested me the most was that when I [traveled to Europe] I knew what Joseph Beuys was doing, he knew what I was doing, and we both, we just started to talk. How did I know what Daniel Buren was doing, and to an extent, he knew exactly what I was doing? How did everybody know? It's an interesting thing. I'm still fascinated by it because, why is it now, with the Internet and everything else, you get whole groups of artists who have chosen to be regional? They really are only with the people they went to school with.
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.
Related Authors
Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes
Burmese
Activist
Bill Ayers Quotes
American
Activist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes
American
Activist
Emma Goldman Quotes
Russian
Activist
Gloria Steinem Quotes
American
Activist
Jesse Jackson Quotes
American
Activist
Julian Assange Quotes
Australian
Activist
Louis Farrakhan Quotes
American
Activist
Malala Yousafzai Quotes
Pakistani
Activist
Malcolm X Quotes
American
Activist
Michael Moore Quotes
American
Activist
Noam Chomsky Quotes
American
Activist
Peace Pilgrim Quotes
American
Activist
Shane Claiborne Quotes
American
Activist
Thomas Paine Quotes
English
Activist
Van Jones Quotes
American
Activist