Top 1200 Government Surveillance Quotes & Sayings

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.

The internet is like a surround system, a landscape at its most benign, a closed system of surveillance and self-surveillance at its more sinister. Something we can no longer imagine an outside of.

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

In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government - as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance - people feel powerless.

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?

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.

We have to argue forcefully and demand that the government recognise that these programmes do not prevent - mass surveillance does not prevent acts of terrorism.

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

The reason the FISA standard is constitutional is that the government is supposed to use FISA surveillance not for criminal investigations but for counterintelligence probes pursued under the president's authority to conduct foreign policy.

If we are to assess the rationality of government expenditures to protect the lives of Americans through massive domestic surveillance, we need to compare this program to others aimed at saving American lives.

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

Corporate and government surveillance aren't separate; they're an alliance of interests.

China's leaders seek to subordinate the rights of the individual to the will of the Communist Party. They exert government control over companies and subvert the privacy and freedom of their citizens with an authoritarian surveillance state.

The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.

Betty Shabazz was the wife of a man who challenged a government that was historically unjust. She was harassed and placed under surveillance by the Nation of Islam (NOI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The nature of the government's surveillance on me and my family is forensically proven and not subject to legitimate question.

From the Fourth Amendment to post-Watergate reforms to the national outcry when Bush's warrantless surveillance was revealed in 2005, the United States has a strong tradition of overseeing the government's power to spy on its citizens.

Surveillance legislation fit for the 21st century, which strikes the right balance between privacy, security and democracy is a prize worth fighting for, and Labour will work constructively with the government to achieve it.

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.

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

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.

Everyone is now considered a potential terrorist, providing a rational for both the government and private corporations to spy on anybody, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. Surveillance is supplemented by a growing domestic army of baton-wielding police forces who are now being supplied with the latest military equipment.

The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.

The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.

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.

Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens.

The best proof of the high quality of American beef is the continued negative BSE findings supported by the highest surveillance possible. The administration should be working to increase our surveillance of BSE, not scaling it back.

I think that has a lot of dangers, as does government surveillance, which is way too high.

I think most Americans are against illegal surveillance of their emails and telephone calls by the government.

A big factor is that the enthusiast camp's values are really rooted in Silicon Valley and in these supposedly new business models. But again, I think this such an interesting moment because things like the NSA revelations are really forcing people to recognize the connections between corporate and government surveillance.

Republicans don't want to shrink government. They want more and more military, more and more surveillance. They'd like to have the government banning gay marriage and so forth.

The atmosphere of fear and security manipulated by the government has converted American citizens into terrorist suspects who are all subject to arbitrary and unreviewable detention and surveillance.

The New York Police Department says Iran has conducted surveillance inside New York City. They say Iranian operatives are using special mobile surveillance units. I believe they're called taxi cabs.

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.

Bringing an end to mass government surveillance needs to be a central pillar of returning to the principles we have put in jeopardy in the early 21st century.

Options other than mastectomy include high risk surveillance and risk reduction. Surveillance is a combination of monthly self breast exam, annual mammography and whole breast screening ultrasound, annual breast MRI, and biannual clinical breast exam.

When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a surveillance state, which is coming to include the whole population in its surveillance. This is our reward for accepting the restraints on the way we live now.

Incidentally, our railroad facilities are under video surveillance by the federal police. However, the federal and state governments will have to determine whether video surveillance shouldn't be significantly expanded to a certain degree.

We do not take away the powers of surveillance. We do not take away the right and the power of the government to go after those who would do us wrong.

Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us.

The merging of the military-industrial complex, surveillance state and unbridled corporate power points to the need for strategies that address what is specific about the current warfare and surveillance state and the neoliberal project and how different interests, modes of power, social relations, public pedagogies and economic configurations come together to shape its politics.

... we grapple with this 'law of sin' (Rom. 8:2) and expel it from our body, establishing in its place the surveillance of the intellect. Through this surveillance we prescribe what is fitting for every faculty of the soul and every member of the body. For the senses we prescribe what they should take into account and to what extent they should do so, and this exercise of the spiritual law is called self-control.

Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning.

Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person's life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.

The government harasses everything. The government must keep a constant surveillance of all activities by black people in order to maintain their reign over them, especially when they are in a minority.

We can't have democracy if we're having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we've never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.

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

What we're really debating is not security versus liberty, it's security versus surveillance. When we talk about electronic interception, the way that surveillance works is it preys on the weakness of protections that are being applied to all of our communications. The manner in which they're protected.

While President Obama may not have ordered any surveillance of Trump or his advisors, the real question is whether he or Attorney General Loretta Lynch were aware of or approved of any surveillance of Trump and his staff during the campaign.

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.

The threat is that the public will know what the government is up to. Any system of power is going to want to keep free from public surveillance, that's natural. Its shouldn't be but, its very natural.

Today we are at a crossroads. The technology is available for two great options: The massive surveillance state, or the renewed freedom of a deeply-involved citizenry thinking independently and holding the government to the highest standards.

Keep under strict surveillance and control those secret establishments which, within your government structures, seem to regard themselves as above the law.

Congress has an obligation to clear the legal fog by passing my bill to require the federal government to obtain a warrant if it wants to conduct aerial surveillance.

I am disturbed by how states abuse laws on Internet access. I am concerned that surveillance programmes are becoming too aggressive. I understand that national security and criminal activity may justify some exceptional and narrowly-tailored use of surveillance. But that is all the more reason to safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms.

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

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

Doctors and nurses, with their training and their experiences, they would be able to detect unusual patterns of disease. That's why we say it is important for every country to have a proper surveillance system. The function of the surveillance system is to detect unusual patterns of diseases.

We have to call mass surveillance mass surveillance. We can't let governments around the world redefine, and sort of weasel their way out of it by saying this is bulk collection.

It's fascinating to see how things have changed. Basically, every time the US government gets off the soapbox of the Sunday-morning talk shows, the average American's support for the surveillance revelations grows.