Edward Snowden's Motivation: Internet Freedom

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

Those are the words that open the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, a seminal paper by John Perry Barlow. In the paper, the former Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the online rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation argued governments should never meddle with cyberspace, a separate place where the real-world rules had no reason to exist.