A Quote by Trevor Paglen

Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centres; intelligence agencies are based in real buildings. Surveillance systems ultimately consist of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that supports them.

Trevor Paglen

Quote Topics

Agencies Based Buildings Concrete Consist Data Digital Intelligence Intelligence Agencies Material Network People Programs Real Require Resources Supports Surveillance Systems Technologies Them Ultimately Vast

Quote Author

Trevor Paglen
American - Artist
Born: 1974

Closed Circuit' came out of a general anxiety about surveillance. Government surveillance and private surveillance.

Steven Knight

The combination of the growth of these digital technologies, the ability of the government to conjure up these secret interpretations, plus a very unusual and novel court make for this ever-expanding surveillance state. We so treasure our freedoms; we will regret it if our generation doesn't use this unique time to reform the surveillance laws and make it clear that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can do both.

Ron Wyden

If even one country, an Iceland for example, defects from this global legislative bargain and says no, we're not going to enforcement mass surveillance here. We're not going to do that. That's where all of the data centres, all the service providers in the world will relocate to. And I think that gives us a real chance to see a more liberal than authoritarian future.

Edward Snowden

As digital communications have multiplied, and NSA capabilities with them, the agency has shifted resources from surveillance of individual targets to the acquisition of communications on a planetary scale.

Barton Gellman

As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies.

Douglas Rushkoff

Long before the 2016 presidential campaign, confidential sources had alerted me to longstanding misuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court system and the erosion of protections when it came obtaining permission for wiretaps and other surveillance methods.

Sharyl Attkisson

Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place.

Al Gore

When we have some horrible terrorist attacks happen in some country we see in the recording that follows, that the intelligence community already knew about these people in advance. We know that these countries were involved in intelligence sharing premiums, that they benefited from mass surveillance, and yet they didn't stop the attacks. Yet at the same time we immediately see intelligence officials running to the newspapers and claiming that we need more surveillance, that we need more intrusion, that we need more expense of powers because it could have stopped an attack.

Edward Snowden

I think mass surveillance is a bad idea because a surveillance society is one in which people understand that they are constantly monitored.

Trevor Paglen

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.

Jeffrey Rosen

The concept of surveillance is ingrained in our beings. God was the original surveillance camera.

Hasan M. Elahi

The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general.

Edward Snowden

Martin Luther King was a victim of surveillance, and had great solidarity with victims of surveillance.

Cornel West

When I was working in Japan, I created a system for ensuring that intelligence data was globally recoverable in the event of a disaster. I was not aware of the scope of mass surveillance. I came across some legal questions when I was creating it. My superiors pushed back and were like, "Well, how are we going to deal with this data?" And I was like, "I didn't even know it existed."

Edward Snowden

For those Muslim Chinese not in camps, Xinjiang is a surveillance state. Millions of artificial-intelligence-powered cameras use facial- and gait-recognition technologies to monitor individuals, Internet activity is closely tracked and DNA samples are collected.