You’ve heard it said by statists many times, “Why do you care about the government snooping on you if you’re not doing anything wrong?”

It’s hard to top Snowden’s response:

“Arguing that you don’t care about free speech, because you have nothing to hide; arguing that you don’t care about the censorship of the Internet, because you’re not a criminal… is like arguing you don’t care about freedom of speech, because you have nothing to say.”

Snowden has had a very long time to think deeply about these issues and expressed himself wonderfully the other day by video from Moscow at a conference in Portugal.

“You don’t need rights if you are privileged. You don’t need rights if you are powerful. You don’t need rights if you are the majority because society shapes itself to your interests, to your needs. But that is a frozen society. That is a society that never moves forward. That is a society that is never questioned and never challenged…. But if we do not leave open doors, if we do not protect the open platform of our speech whether it is on the street or whether it is on the Internet, we are saying that we as a species have gone far enough. We as a society, as a nation of laws have made enough progress. We are going to stop here and never move.”

“We need the right of disagreeing. We need the right of dissent.”

Watch more here.