It seems to me that we are living in an increasingly unfree society.
— Katharine Gun
Most people don't know what goes on in the intelligence services. Certainly I had very little idea what went on in GCHQ. For me it was a job, a chance to use my languages.
The whole issue of Iraq has left us with a legacy, which is not good. The ripple effect from that initial invasion is continually being felt in worldwide institutions, in the U.S. and the U.K.
I know my own flaws only too well.
I was just wondering if I'd ever get a visa to go to the U.S. Probably not.
We're living in a society where there's a cacophony of noise and opinion.
Ironically, becoming known publicly was my biggest fear. And it was partly because I'm on the whole a fairly shy person.
I did not make my disclosure about the deceitful manipulation of the U.N. before the invasion of Iraq began in order to garner fame or fortune.
What has to be understood is that most whistle-blowers are not natural activists - this one certainly wasn't. We usually work in anonymous jobs, far from the spotlight. We are not campaigners, or journalists, or wannabe celebrities, craving a platform. Our conscience tells us we have to reveal what we know.
Now everybody is questioning everything, so it's up to journalists who really care about the truth to fight for their corner of the truth and journalistic freedom.
Why did the British authorities wait eight months before charging me - and then drop the charges, claiming there was insufficient evidence for prosecution when I had confessed to the leak from the start?
Cheering crowds have never been my sort of thing.
I have only ever followed my conscience.
I mean, Ed Snowden was basically saying the same things that Bill Binney and Thomas Drake and other U.S. whistleblowers had said before him. But he came out more publicly, and maybe revealed more. He showed that when the U.S. government said, 'We are not surveilling U.S. citizens,' that was a lie.
I worked for GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters, and is the equivalent of the NSA here in the U.S.
I'm a fairly happy-go-lucky person, generally fairly optimistic, but there were points when I was down.
I think of journalists as being bullet-proof in a way.
The Official Secrets Act 1989 may need reforming for the digital era, but I would argue that at its heart there should be protection for whistleblowers.
It is vital to speak up in a democracy. Otherwise we are living in dictatorships.
I felt guilty - like, I leaked this memo, and now there's going to be a witch hunt for the person who did it, and I'm not going to be able to deny it. That was when reality hit.
Obviously I'm not prone to leak secrets left, right and centre.
There was this saying in GCHQ that, if you didn't leave after five years, you stay there for life. It was always my intention to leave before five years.
I wouldn't describe myself as an activist.
All I can say is that you have to live with your conscience at the end of your life, and it's the only thing that you have that belongs to yourself and nobody else.
Working at GCHQ was a relatively easy, reliable job. As long as you always toe the 'party line', you are more or less guaranteed a job for life.
If my own country is subverting the rule of law and sending its own citizens, its military, into harm's way on the basis of lies and propaganda, I would argue that being a patriot is calling out those lies and saying, ‘No, you don't send our military into harm's way with no legal justification.'
After the invasion of Afghanistan, when the focus suddenly turned toward Iraq, I suddenly thought, ‘What on earth had Iraq got to do with the war on terror?'
After the initial flurry of media interest, I was left to figure out how to move on with my life - and that proved hard. I was glad to get back to what I hoped would be normality, but the effect on me had been traumatising.
I never aligned myself specifically with the anti-war movement.
I know people have tried to make citizens' arrests on Tony Blair and so on, but really it's time the international criminal court has some guts and charges white war criminals. They need to face justice just like other war criminals.
I've never met Snowden, I've never spoken with him personally. I mean, he's extremely smart. Very, very smart. I guess he was a lot less naive than I was.
When you have the initial GCHQ induction course for new arrivals, they tell you… not to trust journalists, to be careful to keep everything confidential.
I was a housewife, I suppose, and luckily I have a very high boredom threshold.
If you are a journalist, check and double-check your sources. Don't just swallow what politicians tell you.
I'm just baffled in the 21st century we as human beings are still dropping bombs on each other as a means to resolve issues.
In any walk of life, you can choose to do the right thing.
We all need to be conscious of what news we take as gospel. And we need to maybe be a little bit sceptical about what we digest.
The whole Big Brother vision of the world is looming large.
We are living in an age where it's difficult to know what the truth is and we have got politicians in charge who actually appear to not really care what the truth is.
You just have to get on with life, there's no alternative. You could curl up in a ball on your bed, but that's not going to achieve anything.
I was arrested on suspicion of breach of Official Secrets Act in March 2003, but they didn't charge me until November. Now, the in-between months, I was bailed and re-bailed, and my life was on standstill. I was in limbo. It was a difficult time for me and my family, because we just did not know what the future held for us.
I'm not a politician; I don't have a well-organised PR machine to craft my every word.
If a rogue nation were to attack the U.K. physically, I would be a patriot, yes; I would try to defend the U.K.
The world is moving in a completely fascist, corporate direction. It worries me, it should worry us all.
Truth and accountability were drilled into me as a child.
Because I'm not ambitious it's not paramount for me to find myself in a high-paid job.
I did everything I could to remain anonymous for as long as possible.
First of all, I never set out to be a whistleblower. Secondly, I never expected that my story would be interesting to anybody. Third of all, you know, I was actually terrified of being named, of being identified.
I didn't feel at all guilty about what I did, so I couldn't plead guilty, even though I would get a more lenient sentence.
I grew up in Taiwan, which was a military dictatorship.
