Citizen Surveillance Quotes

The global threat of 'Big Brother' can actually be conquered purely by technology.

Spying on our citizens? That's just wrong.

It would be a matter of concern for government if intrusive data capture has been deployed against Indian citizens or government infrastructure.

What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance?

That's not how national security works... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens!

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.

Taking privacy cues from the federal government is - to say the least - ironic, considering today's Orwellian level of surveillance. At virtually any given time outside of one's own home, an American citizen can reasonably assume his movements and actions are being monitored by something, by somebody, somewhere.

The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.

A government that spies on people to find out what they are thinking is a government that isn’t listing to them.

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

By the time of the GDR's demise, two in every 13 citizens were informers.

People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.

Unfettered discretion [in obtaining information could] alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.

Preventing surveillance of millions of people at a time is totally within our ability.

The Russians win when we allow our intelligence community to be politicized, when we allow political opposition research to function as a basis for a warrant to spy on American citizens.

There's capital controls and there's people control. So every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in.

The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.

We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world.

I think the big difference between most countries and the U.S., is that governments are more straightforward now about their intentions to gather information on private communications.

This is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear. By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the United States yearly, this administration and a supine opposition are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and spying on 300 million Americans.

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.

Historically, measures initially directed at foreign nationals have subsequently been extended to citizens. What happens is foreign nationals are the easiest targets and most vulnerable targets, so they're the initial targets. But government officials, once you give them a certain kind of power over individuals, they get used to it and almost inevitably seek out ways to extend it. You will see that virtually every form of repressive government measure that has been employed in the United States against citizens started out as an antialien measure and was then extended to citizens.

There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them.