Citizen Monitoring Quotes

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable.

I believe there is significant overreach by the NSA in how it monitors American citizens.

To deal with COVID-19, countries like India, Brazil, Jordan and Thailand are cutting press freedom and freedom of expression. In nations like Israel, South Korea and the U.S., intrusive surveillance has been imposed to track the movement of citizens, at the expense of human rights.

There is no need for neighborhood informants and paper dossiers if the government can see citizens' every Web site visit, e-mail and text message.

Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen.

I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere.

What the government wants is something they never had before. They want total awareness. The question is, is that something we should be allowing?

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

We didn't have to use technology to build a surveillance state.

Finding the Russian scientists may be a problem being that Russia does not have a Social Security System, as here in America, that allows us to monitor, track down and capture an American citizen.

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.

No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

As it turns out, American-made technology had helped Mubarak and his security state collect, compile, and parse vast amounts of data about everyday citizens.