Glenn Greenwald Quotes

Given the pervasive secrecy of the Bush-Cheney administration, and the sorry consequences of that disposition, President Barack Obama's early emphasis on openness in government seems almost inevitable.

Do Obama and Boxer realize they are on the wrong side of a tsunami of voter discontent with a government run by and for the public employee unions?

Americans can live with the fact that good people sometimes give their lives for this country, but what they can't take, what they can't live with is when their government is not square with them.

China need to be fought back on. And what we need to do is go at the things that they are most sensitive and most embarrassing to them; that they're hiding; get that information and put it out in public. Let the Chinese people start to digest how corrupt the Chinese government is; how they steal from the Chinese people; and how they're enriching oligarchs all throughout China.

What many commentators have missed in the ongoing attack on Edward Snowden is not that he uncovered information that made clear how corrupt and intrusive the American government has become - how willing it is to engage in vast crimes against the American public.

In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press. The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.

Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.

The accountability of government has gone to the point where the very use of the law is the instrument of illegality.

All of us should remember that the federal government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

People should be concerned about installing a more sensible, responsible government. What we [the burmese] need is a government that is accountable and transparent, so that the people know what it is doing and can judge for themselves whether or not they like what is being done.

You know, my sense is that transparency is a good thing. It also has to be what - private information should be safeguarded so that individuals are not caught in the cross-fire here. But I think that our government, and people who are working in our government who should have been on the record - Hillary Clinton, remember, deleted half of her email, which is like, what's wrong with this picture?

The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

I've been doing lot of work, and hopefully will bring it to fruition in a way people can see it, really understanding - this is going to sound funny, but what does government really do, how is it really funded, and what measures exist to evaluate how it does at what it does? No forecast, no policy, no prediction, just a realistic perspective on what is. Call it like a "10k for government" we've been working on with a website, with additional data.

Since I've been in the Senate, is that my work with people like Tom Coburn on opening up transparency in government, making sure that every dollar the federal government spends that's out there - that that's all posted on a searchable database on the Internet.

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.

We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to take action.

Nowadays, the media have to be there to keep you from asking too many questions, from getting together with other people who might want to do the Jeffersonian thing and call out the government.

The Liberals, apparently, want to prorogue the House. They want to run out of town, get out of town just one step ahead of the sheriff. Is the Liberal government committed to staying here as planned throughout the month of November so that it can be held accountable in the House for its actions?... Now is it true that the government will prorogue the House so that it will not be held accountable for its shameful record.

It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

There's a real danger in the way our representative government functions today. It functions properly only when paired with accountability.