William T. Vollmann Quotes
I’d rather risk being a terrorists victim than live under a surveillance state.
William T. Vollmann, Journalist, Essayist, and Novelist, “Machines of Loving Grace”, Foreign Policy Magazine, December 2013
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He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are repugnant to us because they have no respect for Civil and Human Rights and would deny us what we value so highly and for which so many Americans have sacrificed. We are little better off if we surrender our civil rights in order to cope with the problem of losing our civil rights to the likes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
People at both ends of this polarized issue had deep suspicions of people at the other pole.
The Great Firewall of China is the digital control system whereby the Chinese government can block the Chinese public from seeing web sites that are considered dangerous. Generally, these either involve pornography of political viewpoints unacceptable to the government.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The intelligence and law enforcement advocates of reducing privacy rights so that law enforcement can prevent acts of terrorism frame the question as a tradeoff between civil right and safety. However, as Leahy and many others point out, we would not be much safer if we gave up all our ivil rights. Further, hundreds of thousands of American have given their lives so that we would have those civil rights. Without them what are we protecting.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.
to enhance its ability to conduct surveillance
In England there was an eye on American McCarthyism and its excesses.
William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction for the novel Europe Central.
