It is a great honor to be recognized for the public good created
by this act of whistleblowing. However, the greater reward in
recognition belongs to the individuals and organizations in
countless countries around the world who shattered boundaries
of language and geography to stand together in defense of
the public right to know and the value of our privacy. It is
not I, but the public who has affected this powerful change to
abrogation of basic constitutional rights by secret agencies. It
is not I, but newspapers around the world who have reason to
hold our governments to the issues whom powerful officials
sought to distract from these very issues with rumor and
insult. And it is not I, but certain brave representatives in
governments around the world who are proposing new protections,
limits and safeguards to prevent future assaults on our public
rights and private lives.

My gratitude belongs to all of those who have reached out
to their friends and family to explain why suspicionless
surveillance matters. It belongs to the man in a mask on the
street on a hot day and a woman with a sign and an umbrella
in the rain. It belongs to the young people in college with
the civil liberties sticker on their laptop and the kid in
the back of a class in high school making means. All of these
people accept that change begins with a single voice and spoke
one message to the world: governments must be accountable to us
for the decisions that they make. Decisions regarding the kind
of world we will live in. What kinds of rights and freedoms
individuals will enjoy are the domain of the public, not the
government in the dark. Yet the happiness of this occasion
is for me tempered by an awareness of the road traveled to
bring us here today. In contemporary America the combination
of weak legal protections for whistleblowers, bad laws that
provide no public interest offense and immunity for officials
who have strayed behind the boundaries of law, has perverted
the system of incentives that regulates secrecy in government.

This results in the situation that associates
an unreasonably high price with maintaining the
necessary foundation of liberal democracy, our informed
citizenry. Speaking truth to power has cost whistleblowers
their freedom, family, our country. This situation
befits neither America nor the world. It does not require
sophistication to understand that policies acquainting
necessary acts of warning with threats to national security
inevitably lead to ignorance and insecurity. The society
that falls into the deterned trap known in cultural wisdom
as “shooting the messenger” will quickly find that
not only is it without messengers, but it no longer enjoys
messages at all. It is right to question the wisdom of
such policies and the unintended incentives that result
from them. 

If the penalty providing secret information
to a foreign government in bad faith is less then the
penalty for providing that information to the public in
good faith are we not incentivizing spies rather than
whistleblowers? What does it mean for the public when
we apply laws targeting terrorism against those engaged
in acts of journalism? Can we enjoy openness in our
society if we prioritize intimidation and revenge over
fact finding and investigation? Where do we draw the line
between national security and public interest? And how can
we have confidence in the balance when the only advocates
allowed at the table of review come from the halls of
government itself? 

Questions such as these can only be
answered through the kind of vigorous public discussion
we are enjoying today. We must never forget the lessons
of history regarding the dangers of surveillance gone
too far nor are human power to amend such systems to the
public benefit. The road we travel has been difficult,
but it leads us to better times. Together we can guarantee
both the safety and the rights of the generations that
follow. To all of those who are participated in this debate
from the highest official to the smallest citizen I say
“thank you”.

Edward J. Snowden