Theresa May Quotes

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

This is a big debate concerning the values of the society in question: Whether the risk of a terrorist act is more important than the 100 percent right to privacy.

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you're going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

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.

Our national security requires us to be strong and fearless, but not at the cost of personal privacy.

I believe the Patriot Act strikes the right balance needed to protect our freedom and security.

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.

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.

Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone's phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That's more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.

Have you noticed the people most likely to be up in arms about governments apparently spying on us tend to be the most non-private people you know? The people launching petitions and wailing about Big Brother and data collection are most likely to be the most constant self-presenters.

Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused.

I particularly recognize that reasonable people can disagree as to what that proper balance or blend is between privacy and security and safety.

The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security.

While the debate on the Patriot Act is far from over, it is important that all Americans continue in this dialogue and work together to ensure greater security for our nation.

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.

Privacy isn't negotiable. It's the right of every American.

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.

As all of our lives become digital, the logic of encryption is all of our lives will be covered by strong encryption, and therefore all of our lives - including the lives of criminals and terrorists and spies - will be in a place that is utterly unavailable to court-ordered process. And that, I think, to a democracy should be very, very concerning.

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

I have nothing to hide!

Nobody - myself included - believes that we could ever achieve total information awareness. But the government needs to set goals and long-range objectives. Total information awareness is a good goal.

Many of our customers have serious concerns about government surveillance of the Internet. We share their concerns.

A democratic country has zero tolerance for all illegal monitoring operations.

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