Snowden grants that NSA employees by and large believe in their mission and trust the agency to handle the secrets it takes from ordinary people - deliberately, in the case of bulk records collection, and 'incidentally,' when the content of American phone calls and e-mails are swept into NSA systems along with foreign targets.

Related Quotes

The causes and severity of NSA infractions vary widely. One in 10 incidents is attributed to a typographical error in which an analyst enters an incorrect query and retrieves data about U.S phone calls or emails.

— Barton Gellman

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Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.

— Alison Gopnik

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The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.

— Barton Gellman

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I'm bad at returning phone calls.

The president overstepped his authority when he asked the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls without obtaining a warrant.

— Sherrod Brown

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