Leverett Saltonstall Quotes

Government will have to learn what private businesses are beginning to realize that in this increasingly transparent world, the successful organizations will be those that are able to operate with very few secrets…. The cost of maintaining secrecy is getting higher and higher even when it can be done at all.

Bureaucracy always seeks the path of least disclosure.

I'm glad the government has shut down. Think about it, for the first time in years it's safe to talk on the phone and send emails without anybody listening in.

Edward Snowden gave a little press conference today. He is apparently seeking temporary asylum in Russia. Because, you know, when you're tired of the government snooping into everything you do, Putin's Russia is definitely the place you want to go.

Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

We're now more than a year since my NSA revelations, and despite numerous hours of testimony before Congress, despite tons of off-the-record quotes from anonymous officials who have an ax to grind, not a single US official, not a single representative of the United States government, has ever pointed to a single case of individualized harm caused by these revelations. This, despite the fact that former NSA director Keith Alexander said this would cause grave and irrevocable harm to the nation.

There will always be leaks; in Washington, everywhere.

A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know.

When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth.

You essentially have a human-relations database on millions of Americans. The administration said, "Well we're not listening to calls, we don't collect content." As [Vice President] Joe Biden said when he was a United States senator, you don't need to listen to those calls. If you have who somebody called, when and where, and you learned, for example, somebody called a psychiatrist three times in the last few days and twice after midnight, you know a lot about that person that they may not want people to know about them, especially the government.

Look at it this way: this administration is taking unprecedented steps to make sure that the government's secrets remain private while simultaneously invading the privacy of its citizens... Many innocents must be violated so that a few guilty people can be stopped. It's a digital stop-and-frisk.

I wish I could say I was shocked at the reports the NSA is secretly spying on the private phone calls of millions of Verizon customers. However, this is a predictable result of a government that continues to erode our liberties while promising some glimmering hope of security.

I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we're seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We're losing our privacy rights. It's a huge issue.

Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.

Trusting the government to monitor your calls without listening. It's kind of like trusting Chris Christie to pick up the McDonald's and not eat the fries on the way home.

If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide from the giant surveillance apparatus the government's been hiding.

The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.

The federal government said today they've begun training sessions for airport security workers to provide what they call more customer satisfaction to the travels, they want to make it easier for us. They're instructing security guards to glance at your luggage tags so that they can call you by your first name. Isn't that creepy? The guy touching your wife, calling her by her first name.

No one likes to see a government folder with his name on it.

Why is it that the most important stuff to listen to is almost always the stuff we don't want to hear?

I’m sick of asking questions everyone else already knows the answers to.

There are things you don't want to know you can do

I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.