Surveillance State Quotes & Sayings

The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication. — Barry Eisler

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

With the Patriot Bill in place, the NSA no longer needed to get a warrant from a judge to tap into anybody's electronic information. A Surveillance State that would have boggled the mind of Orwell was born. — Jay Parini

From that point on, the extraordinary system of spies and informers which has played an important part in the political work of the French state into our own time took shape. (Sartine, who became lieutenant general de police in 1759, is supposed to have said to Louis XV, "Sire, when three people are chatting in the street one of them is surely my man.") Eighteenth-century police manuals like those of Colquhoun in England or Lemaire in France are no less than general treatises on the government's full repertoire of domestic regulation, coercion, and surveillance. — Charles Tilly

The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money. — Jeremy Scahill

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. — Glenn Greenwald

In a surveillance state it was vital to reserve the ability to turn a blind eye to certain people at certain times. — Ramez Naam

When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a surveillance state, which is coming to include the whole population in its surveillance. This is our reward for accepting the restraints on the way we live now. — Tom Stoppard

The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions - like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn't empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate. — John Perry Barlow

You have an always-expanding, omnipresent surveillance state that's constantly chipping away at the liberties and freedoms of law-abiding Americans. — Ron Wyden

Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability. — Glenn Greenwald

Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen. — Glenn Greenwald

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice. — Glenn Greenwald

The surveillance state has run amok. Technology that's enabled us to send selfies 24/7 - not that valuable - has also enabled us to be spied upon us 24/7. — Alexis Ohanian

Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us. — Ramez Naam

Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place. — Al Gore

The idea that we should dismantle the core protections of our political system to erect a ubiquitous surveillance state for the sake of this risk is the height of irrationality. Yet exaggeration of the threat is repeated over and over. — Glenn Greenwald

When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects. — Edward Snowden

The combination of the growth of these digital technologies, the ability of the government to conjure up these secret interpretations, plus a very unusual and novel court make for this ever-expanding surveillance state. We so treasure our freedoms; we will regret it if our generation doesn't use this unique time to reform the surveillance laws and make it clear that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can do both. — Ron Wyden

We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance. Nor should the price of immunity be refraining from controversial or provocative dissent. — Glenn Greenwald

What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of. — Glenn Greenwald

To turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair. — George Orwell

To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination. — Glenn Greenwald

Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards. — Oliver DeMille

The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phony and fragile as East Germany did thirty years ago. — Paul Mason

Incidentally, our railroad facilities are under video surveillance by the federal police. However, the federal and state governments will have to determine whether video surveillance shouldn't be significantly expanded to a certain degree. — Otto Schily

Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten - and they're talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state. — Edward Snowden

Not many years ago, nearly 100 percent of people who thought they were being constantly watched were certifiable paranoids. But recently it was revealed that, in the name of public safety, Homeland Security and more than a hundred other local, state, and federal agencies are operating aerial surveillance drones of the kind previously used only on foreign battlefields - at low altitudes outside the authority of air-traffic control. Soon, the bigger worry will not be that, as you walk your dog, you are secretly being watched but that the rapidly proliferating drones will begin colliding with one another and with passenger aircraft, and that you'll be killed by the plummeting drone that was monitoring you to be sure that you picked up Fido's poop in a federally approved pet-waste bag. — Dean Koontz

We all deserve credit for this new surveillance state that we live in because we the people voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans alike ... We voted for the people who voted for it, and then voted for the people who reauthorized it, then voted for the people who re-re-authorize d it. — Stephen Colbert

In my view, it is an error to think about 'alternatives to prison' if what we mean by that is 'electronic bracelets,' through which people are subject to computer-monitored house arrest, or granting fuller surveillance and disciplinary powers and technologies to other state agencies, such as welfare and mental health, through 'transcarceration' policies ... We need to decrease, not increase, the means by which the state, in its multifarious networks of authority, controls human lives and selectively incapacitates people who, no less than others, have the potential to contribute to the improvement of hte human condition. — Karlene Faith

For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, " 'does engage' in computer network exploitation," but "does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including 'cyber' " [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its "customers," a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce: — Glenn Greenwald

Health education emphasizing risks is a form of pedagogy, which, like other forms, serves to legitimize ideologies and social practices. Risk discourse in the public health sphere allows the state, as the owner of knowledge, to exert power of the bodies of its citizens. Risk discourse, therefore, especially when it emphasizes lifestyle risks, serves as an effective Foucauldian agent of surveillance and control that is difficult to challenge because of its manifest benevolent goal of maintaining standards of health. In doing so, it draws attention away from the structural causes of ill-health. — Deborah Lupton

Under dictatorship, people are enslaved but they know it," he told de Mohrenschildt, recalling his days in the Soviet Union. "Here, the politicians constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brainwashing." Oswald worried about the FBI's police-state surveillance tactics. And he believed that America was turning more "militaristic" as it increasingly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries. — David Talbot

Our Constitution's separation of church and state never meant that religion could have nothing to do with the governing of our nation. The Founders simply intended that the United States would not have an established state religion and that no one could be sanctioned by the state for being of the wrong faith. Separation of church and state does not mean, as many people inside government believe today, that religion can never be discussed when investigating a threat or interrogating a suspect. And it definitely does not mean that a subject under surveillance as a threat to American lives cannot be recorded or otherwise monitored when he steps into a mosque. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, it matters not whether he steps into a mosque, a church, or a temple; he is still a threat and should be treated as such. — Sebastian Gorka

I came to the United States because I valued living as a free person, one who is able to advocate in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been turning into a less free society, a police and surveillance state, especially after 9/11. — Sami Al-Arian

I did not come to this country for the terror from paramilitary," declared Voytek, hoarsely. "I did not come to this country for motherfucker. But motherfucker is waiting. Always. Is carceral state, surveillance state. Orwell. You have read Orwell? — William Gibson

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on "Jersey Shore." The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. — Chris Hedges

I knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally. — Glenn Greenwald

Not enough people know or understand just how little freedom we have left. — Korban Blake

The sense of immunity felt by a particular group currently in power is bound to be illusory. That is made clear when we look at how partisan affiliation shapes people's sense of the dangers of state surveillance. What emerges is that yesterday's cheerleaders can quickly become today's dissenters. — Anonymous

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

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for young people, the elderly, people of color, and the impoverished.36 At this historical juncture there is a merging of violence and governance along with the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy. This becomes obvious in the emergence of a surveillance state in which social media not only become new platforms for the invasion of privacy but further legitimate a culture in which monitoring functions are viewed as both necessary and benign. Meanwhile, the state-sponsored society of hyper-fear increasingly regards each and every person as a potential terrorist suspect. — Henry A. Giroux

Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can f#$%ing die and leave North Korea! — Christopher Hitchens

The Orwellian vision was about state-sponsored surveillance. Now it's not just the state, it's your nosy neighbor, your ex-spouse and people who want to spam you. — Howard Rheingold