John Lanchester Quotes

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.

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy.

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.

If we give up all our privacy rights, have we become any safer?

Since the first Patriot Act, as this has evolved, more and more of the privacy of Americans is disappearing. And that’s going to hurt us; it’s not going to make us safer.

I want to make it clear … that America is not interested in spying on ordinary citizens.

I'm not against the NSA. I'm not against spying; I'm not against looking at phone records.

I long ago lost track of the number of times the Obama administration has assured everyone that its vacuum-cleaner approach to electronic surveillance does not threaten the privacy or the rights of Americans.

Certainly I support the Constitution, and I respect people's privacy, but I also think we need to err on the side of protecting us.

The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency.

One of the things we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it's healthy for our democracy.

We must protect the very things that make America so special - most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.

The new rule says that the FBI has the right to go to public places on the same terms and conditions as other members of the public for counter-terrorism purposes.

The people of the FBI are sworn to protect both security and liberty. It isn't a question of conflict. We must care deeply about protecting liberty through due process of law, while also safeguarding the citizens we serve - in every investigation.

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

To defend our country we need to gather intelligence on the enemy, but when the intelligence lies to Congress, how are we to trust them? The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business.

What is the government doing or not doing in terms of tracking you, following you, investigating you? And if you're suspicionless, it should be none of the above.

We do not take away the powers of surveillance. We do not take away the right and the power of the government to go after those who would do us wrong.

We should outlaw all wiretapping—public and private, wherever and whenever it occurs, except when the security of the nation itself is at stake—and then only with the strictest safeguards.

Secrecy at the level of the individual suspect is different from keeping the very existence of massive surveillance programs secret.

The evidence does not support the proposition that there is a significant measure of safety that is added as a result of collecting all these records on law abiding Americans.

Plaintiffs have a very significant expectation of privacy in an aggregated collection of their telephony metadata covering the last five years …. the Government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature…. The program infringes of that degree of privacy that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

The message to the NSA is coming from every branch of our government, from every corner of our nation. NSA, you’ve gone too far!

Those who are troubled by our existing programs are not interested in repeating the tragedy of 9-11. And those who defend these programs are not dismissive of civil liberties. The challenge is getting the details right and that is not simple.

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