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Quote by Edward Snowden

“I've talked to a lot of pretty good lawyers around the world. I'm non-extraditable. That's the real reason the US government was pissed off, even when I was initially in Hong Kong.”

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 only way I could be extradited is through the principle of what my lawyers call "politics trumps law."”

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“If it comes to a question of law, the charges they brought against me - the Espionage Act - is called the quintessential political crime. A political crime, in legal terms, is defined as any crime against a state, as opposed to against an individual. Assassination, for example, is not a political crime because you've killed a person, an individual, and they've been harmed; their family's been harmed. But the state itself, you can't be extradited for harming it.”

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“Chelsea Manning got thirty-five years in prison, while I'm still free.”

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“I talk to people in the ACLU office in New York all the time. I'm able to participate in the debate and to campaign for reform. I'm just the first to come forward in the manner that I did and succeed.”

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“When governments go too far to punish people for actions that are dissent rather than a real threat to the nation, they risk delegitimizing not just their systems of justice, but the legitimacy of the government itself. Because when they bring political charges against people for acts that were clearly at least intended to work in the public interest, they deny them the opportunity to mount a public-interest defense.”

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“The charges [government] brought against me, for example, explicitly denied my ability to make a public-interest defense.”

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“There were no whistleblower protections that would've protected me - and that's known to everybody in the intelligence community. There are no proper channels for making this information available when the system fails comprehensively.”

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“The government would assert that individuals who are aware of serious wrongdoing in the intelligence community should bring their concerns to the people most responsible for that wrongdoing, and rely on those people to correct the problems that those people themselves authorized.”

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“Going all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, it is clear that the government is not concerned with damage to national security, because in none of these cases was there damage.”

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“At the trial of Chelsea Manning, the government could point to no case of specific damage that had been caused by the massive revelation of classified information. The charges are a reaction to the government's embarrassment more than genuine concern about these activities, or they would substantiate what harms were done.”

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Author:Edward Snowden