Government Privacy Quotes & Sayings

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [ ... ] and the like. — William O. Douglas

We are moving into a world of unaccountable and secretive corporations that manage all our communications and work hand in hand with governments to make us visible to them. Our privacy is being strip-mined and hoarded. — Rebecca Solnit

Taken in its entirety, the Snowden archive led to an ultimately simple conclusion: the US government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide. Far from hyperbole, that is the literal, explicitly stated aim of the surveillance state: to collect, store, monitor, and analyze all electronic communication by all people around the globe. The agency is devoted to one overarching mission: to prevent the slightest piece of electronic communication from evading its systemic grasp. — Glenn Greenwald

We need to protect the privacy rights of all Americans, and that means stopping the federal government from spying on the cellphones and emails of law-abiding citizens. — Ted Cruz

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet. — Louis D. Brandeis

Of course, in the U.S. the government and politics are gaining more and more ground lately at the cost of the law. The government is very smart; it evokes terror in the hearts of people to convince them to give up their freedom and privacy. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful. — Joe Biden

The Supreme Court must strike down the government's illegal spying program as a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy. — Rand Paul

The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights ... These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy. — Elizabeth Holtzman

Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or instrument of government - but the reverse ... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom ... — Benno C. Schmidt Jr.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals. — Glenn Greenwald

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular. — Jill Lepore

There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States, but around the world. — Glenn Greenwald

The institutions that we've built up over the years to protect our individual privacy rights from the government don't apply to the private sector. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to Silicon Valley. And you can't impeach Google if it breaks its 'Don't be evil' campaign pledge. — Al Franken

There is no transparency, Marus. It can't exist. Surveillance doesn't go both ways. There are those who watch, and those who are watched; the powerful, and the powerless. — Celeste Chaney

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms. — Al Franken

Look at it this way: this administration is taking unprecedented steps to make sure that the government's secrets remain private while simultaneously invading the privacy of its citizens ... Many innocents must be violated so that a few guilty people can be stopped. It's a digital stop-and-frisk ... — Charles M. Blow

A: Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that's not his goal. [His] objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. [He] has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the US government if they were made public. — Glenn Greenwald

We have never really had absolute privacy with our records or our electronic communications - government agencies have always been able to gain access with appropriate court orders. — Dorothy Denning

Taking privacy cues from the federal government is - to say the least - ironic, considering today's Orwellian level of surveillance. At virtually any given time outside of one's own home, an American citizen can reasonably assume his movements and actions are being monitored by something, by somebody, somewhere. — Bob Barr

The Obama administration says we only destroy the privacy of non-Americans. That is not true. The government is spying on Americans. — Glenn Greenwald

So no one cares - and that protects your personal privacy. At least most of the time no one cares. I'm not making the argument that if we're doing nothing wrong, then we shouldn't be afraid of the government monitoring us. That's a stupid, bad argument. We should always be afraid of any government monitoring us. The fact that no one cares what we're talking about is an argument for keeping it that way. We don't want the government to be able to care. Any power you give the government, the government will abuse. George Washington almost said that. — Penn Jillette

Perhaps Americans should recognize that if they want to keep their privacy, they should ask the federal government to do only the things that the Constitution allows. — Dave Kopel

Mr. de Pinto, the dog who protects sheep quickly learns how to direct them, and it becomes a habit. The people have been trained by their 'watchmen' to jump, and to trample what the 'watchmen' want trampled.
I have found, that those who would guard the people are their governors. The government admits that it is a government. The press pretends that it is not. But what a pretense! You orchestrate entire populations. And who elected you? No one. You are self-appointed, you speak for no one, and therefore you have no right to question me as if you represent the common good. — Mark Helprin

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest. — James Bovard

These people were content with their environment, and felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and organizations, and if anything welcoming these intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of 20th century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed. Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later. — J.G. Ballard

Online, we still can't reliably establish one another's identities or trust one another to transact and exchange money without validation from a third party like a bank or a government. These same intermediaries collect our data and invade our privacy for commercial gain and national security. Even with — Don Tapscott

To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government. — Mark Levin

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
[Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)] — Louis D. Brandeis

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building. — Edward Snowden

I want my government to do something about my privacy - I don't want to just do it on my own. — Evgeny Morozov

If you look at the record and the enviable record which Sandra Day O'Connor has written, you find she was the fifth and decisive vote to safeguard Americans' right to privacy, to require our courtrooms to grant access to the disabled, to allow the federal government to pass laws to protect the environment, to preserve the right of universities to use affirmative action, to ban the execution of children in America. — Dick Durbin

No one likes to see a government folder with his name on it. — Stephen King

Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds. — John Perry Barlow

The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government's agents may, under the law, invade the employer's office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government. — Frank Chodorov

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen
a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.
[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343 (1966) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas

In a democracy it is ultimately for us, the citizens, to judge where to place the balance between security and privacy, safety and liberty. It's our lives and liberties that are threatened, not only by terrorism but also by massive depredations of our privacy in the name of counter-terrorism. If those companies from which governments actually take most of our intimate details want to show that they are still on the side of the angels, they had better join this struggle for transparency too. — Timothy Garton Ash

I believe strongly that we can protect our people without undermining our constitutional rights and I worry very, very much about the huge attacks on privacy that we have seen in recent years
both from the government and the private sector. I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian society, and this is something I will oppose as vigorously as I can. — Bernie Sanders

In my lifetime, it's the Supreme Court, not Congress, that integrated our public schools, that allowed people of different races to marry, and established the principle that our government should respect the value of privacy of American families. These decisions are the legacy of justices who chose to expand American freedom. — Dick Durbin

This place does not feel like my country. It feels like countries I have read about where things are very bad. It feels, in fact, like exactly the kind of thing we were protesting against, but we thought it was elsewhere. It is not heartening to find that it has come to us. — Nick Harkaway

There is no denying that Snowden's dramatic disclosures, despite the damage they did to U.S. intelligence, accomplished a salutary service in alerting both the public and the government to the potential danger of a surveillance leviathan." (p.299) — Edward Jay Epstein

The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy. But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we're getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem. — Al Franken

You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else's mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card. — Ron Paul

Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone. — Nick Harkaway

I certainly respect privacy and privacy rights. But on the other hand, the first function of government is to guarantee the security of all the people. — Phil Crane

I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case. — Dan Piraro

I'm quite certain the Windows 8 team is preparing to market IE 10 - and by extension, Windows 8 - as the safe, privacy-enhancing choice, capitalizing on Google's many government woes and consumers' overall unease with the search giant's power. — John Battelle

In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens' privacy and civil liberties are also protected. — Michael McCaul

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is a essential to the one as privacy is to the other. — John Updike

Encryption ... is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government ... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty. — Esther Dyson

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity. — Jeffrey Rosen

I think what we've had in the past is the government has said, "Well, we need to collect the whole haystack." And the haystack is Americans' privacy. Every Americans' privacy. We have to give up all of our privacy. — Rand Paul

When government gets between my lips and my stomach; I call that invasion of privacy! — Joel Salatin

It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations. — Bill Gates

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be. — James Comey

I think that [there is] this fundamental right to privacy and the philosophy that government shouldn't be intrusive. — Tim Cook

With those people, I'm very far apart, because I believe that government access to communications and stored records is valuable when done under tightly controlled conditions which protect legitimate privacy interests. — Dorothy Denning

Yet the possibility of information storage, beyond what men and governments ever had before, can make available at the touch of a button a man's total history (including remarks put on his record by his kindergarten teacher about his ability and character). And with the computer must be placed the modern scientific technical capability which exists for wholesale monitoring of telephone, cable, Telex and microwave transmissions which carry much of today's spoken and written communications. The combined use of the technical capability of listening in on all these forms of communications with the high-speed computer literally leaves no place to hide and little room for privacy. — Francis A. Schaeffer

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.
[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas

We have got to protect privacy rights. We have got to protect our God-given, constitutionally protected civil liberties, and we are not doing that in the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, as well as the TSA, is a great culprit in being a Gestapo-type organization. — Paul Broun

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations. — Simon Sinek

I support safeguarding users' personally identifiable information and sensitive data like health or financial records. I also believe the government has a responsibility to punish deceptive and unfair practices that defy reasonable expectations about consumers' privacy. — Marsha Blackburn

Is privacy about government security agents decrypting your e-mail and then kicking down the front door with their jackboots? Or is it about telemarketers interrupting your supper with cold calls? It depends. Mainly, of course, it depends on whether you live in a totalitarian or a free society. — James Gleick

Despite being in public life, I value my own privacy immensely and would be as concerned as anyone else if I thought my mobile phone records could be easily available to officials across government. — David Blunkett

I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we're seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We're losing our privacy rights. It's a huge issue. — Bernie Sanders

The US government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide. — Anonymous

Ironically, one of the clearer threats to consumer privacy is the government's largely unchecked ability to collect your sensitive information without due process. — Marsha Blackburn

Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures. — Edward Snowden

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. — James Madison