Hugo Black Quotes

The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

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

The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

I am a deeply committed conservative who wants to keep maximal privacy for every U.S. citizen.

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

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.

This right to privacy ... doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold–Griswold was the contraceptive case–and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more ...this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, 'Well, it's my individual freedom.' Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

I believe that it is critical for this country to have a zone of privacy —– for everyone,

There is not a syllable in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to spy on civilians.

When awesome investigative power is entrusted to so many individuals, it is extremely important that they wield it with a proper regard for your constitutional rights, especially your right to privacy.

Before the American Revolution, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures had slight existence. British policies assaulted the privacy of dwellings and places of business, particularly when royal revenues were at stake.

The federal government has no right to treat all Americans as criminals by spying on their relationship with their doctors, employers, or bankers.

We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance on its citizens.

If you are an American, you can understand why people cannot go through your house and go through your files. By the same token, should they be able to go through them electronically?

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.

The question is not whether granting the government [this] authority makes us incrementally safer, but whether the additional safety is worth the sacrifice in terms of individual privacy, personal liberty and public trust.

I do not believe the government has the right to investigate somebody's private life.

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

But the time has come for journalists to acknowledge that a zone of privacy does exist.

How to strike the right balance between our privacy and our expectation that the state will protect us and facilitate our freedom is one of the most difficult challenges facing us all.

I might have lived in England for the last several years, but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

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.

Privacy is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as freedom of speech is in the First Amendment.