Wil Wheaton Quotes

We won't tolerate abuses and crimes made every day in the name of freedom of speech. That is freedom of extortion and blackmail.

Privacy, in my point of view, is a civil liberty that our Founding Fathers thought of a long time ago and concluded ... was an essential part of what it was to be an American.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

Even if a person is doing nothing wrong, in a free society, that person shouldn’t have to justify every action that government officials might view as suspicious. A key component of freedom is not having to worry about how to explain oneself all the time.

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.

Privacy in one's associations may in many circumstances be indispensable to freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.

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

Encryption and anonymity, separately or together, create a zone of privacy to protect opinion and belief. For instance, they enable private communications and can shield an opinion from outside scrutiny, particularly important in hostile political, social, religious and legal environments.

I think most people accept that it is necessary to have some surveillance in a democratic society. I think most people accept that it's important to have limits and clear safeguards on that.

There is a strong social premise in our country and I feel today freedom is being misused and not used.

Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.

If those of us in positions of responsibility fail to do everything in our power to protect the right of privacy, we risk something far more valuable than money. We risk our way of life.

Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy.

When people fear surveillance, whether it exists or not, they grow afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their government or to anyone else.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

Homeland security intelligence done the wrong way will give us thought police.

We encounter the dilemma of freedom versus authority in all sorts of places but probably nowhere more frequently than in the area of Big Brother's ongoing efforts to protect us from ourselves – efforts that many people view as an invasion of their privacy or as infringement upon their God-given right to be stupid (though they don't usually put it that way).

I can’t allow the U. S. Government to destroy privacy and basic liberties.

Offensive speech anywhere can now be expected to have repercussions everywhere—a new reality never more devastatingly apparent than in the furor following this video insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

How much we all suffer from lack of oversight from the government.

In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty.

Online censorship, mass and targeted surveillance and data collection, digital attacks on civil society and repression resulting from online expression force individuals around the world to seek security to hold opinions without interference and seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds. Many seek to protect their security through encryption, the scrambling of data so only intended recipients may access it

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. [...] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. [...] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

The Constitution defends all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes reasonableness depends upon threat.

I don't need security detail; I don't need anything special. I just walk around, and I can do that, and that's a real luxury when you're in my industry.