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Quote by Edward Snowden

“The authoritarian one believed that an individual's rights were basically provided by governments and were determined by states. The other society - ours - tended to believe that a large portion of our rights were inherent and couldn't be abrogated by governments, even if this seemed necessary.”

Quote by Edward Snowden

Author

Edward Snowden, born on June 21, 1983, is a system administrator. He is renowned for his disclosure of the global surveillance programs of the United States National Security Agency (NSA). In 2013, he leaked a large number of documents about these programs, which sparked widespread international attention. more

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“The question is: Particularly in the post-9/11 era, are societies becoming more liberal or more authoritarian?”

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“Are our competitors - for example, China, which is a deeply authoritarian nation - becoming more authoritarian or more liberal over time?”

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“Has the center of gravity shifted such that all governments have greater powers and fewer restrictions than they ever had, and are empowered by technology in a way that no government ever was in the past?”

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“How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?”

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“Do we want to emulate China in the way that China emulates the West? I think, for most Americans, the answer to that question would be no.”

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“There is more action in some other countries. In Germany, they've called for a very serious inquiry that's discovering more and more. They've just discovered a significant violation of the German Constitution that had been concealed from the Parliament.”

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“In the United States, there hasn't been much legislative change on the surveillance issue, although there are some tepid proposals.”

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“We are a representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through direct action. And that's enshrined in our Constitution and in our values.”

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“We have the right of revolution. Revolution does not always have to be weapons and warfare; it's also about revolutionary ideas.”

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“A given order may at any given time fail to represent those values, even work against those values. I think that's the dynamic we're seeing today.”

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