Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there’s a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I’m no longer alone.
Category Archive: Edward Snowden
I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression.
Who I am really doesn’t matter at all. If I’m the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.
Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.
I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.
My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.
After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power – the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government – for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.
I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.
I don’t see myself as a hero because what I’m doing is self-interested: I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
We’re losing our way as a society. If we don’t stand up, if we don’t say what we think those rights should be, and if we don’t protect them, we will very soon find out that we do not have them.