Thom Tillis Quotes

Because on that watch list, they would be like, yeah, your name - they told me like, yeah, your name matches the name of a terrorist or someone that they're watching. I was just like, what terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and a Muslim - Arabic last - I'm like, who's that guy?

The average American returning from a trip abroad likely - and understandably - assumes the contents of his or her electronic device does not come close to meeting the threshold of 'criminal' activity, such as would give a government agent the right to seize and peruse their iPad just because they are returning from a vacation.

It is illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans and an affront to our Republic to spy on the Senate.

We've got the NSA getting logs of every call you make. The IRS is weaponized like Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

It's funny, having the same name as someone. Me, Emma Watson and Emma Stone, the amount of times I've been called Emma Watson or Emma Stone is so funny. It's just 'cause we're all named Emma. None of us look alike.

At that point, which would be around February 2002, they came and they confiscated my computer, because, they said, they were suspecting that I was communicating with certain Senate members and taking this issue outside the Bureau.

If surveillance infiltrates our homes and personal relationships, that is a gross breach of our human and civil rights.

I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals.

No human government has the right to enquire into private opinions ...

Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied.

Instead of focusing on Snowden and shooting the messenger, we should really focus on the crimes of the NSA [National Security Agency]. Whatever laws Snowden may or may not have broken, they are infinitesimally small compared to the two major surveillance laws and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution that the NSA violated.

The Department of Homeland Security—a massive and nightmarish new Federal bureaucracy…

The NSA has shown, time and time again, it will seize on any wiggle room in the law .

Unfettered discretion [in obtaining information could] alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.

Whenever the creation of a national, computerized database of gun owners is proposed, the advocates pushing it insist that people have nothing to fear because politicians will not abuse the enormous power inherent in such a database.

The NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times a year since Congress gave it broad new powers in 2008.

I start every book with something that outrages me. I'm outraged by the FBI, the CIA, and computers that seem to have catalogued our lives. Power too often is accompanied by irresponsibility.

From the Fourth Amendment to post-Watergate reforms to the national outcry when Bush's warrantless surveillance was revealed in 2005, the United States has a strong tradition of overseeing the government's power to spy on its citizens.

Spying on our citizens? That's just wrong.

He has absolutely no judicial supervision of all of this [ invasions of privacy ]. So all in all, [Barack] Obama is a disaster.

It is annoying when people call me Matilda instead of my name when they actually know my name, because you know, we are two different people. But what can you do?

It's interesting that you mention [Andrei] Sakharov's creative axis - he had produced something for the government that he then realized was something other than he intended. That's something [NSA whistleblower] Bill Binney and I share.

Hi, folks, I'm Jerry Gross. No, I'm not, I'm Jerry Coleman.

I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government.