#surveillance

These thieves defend themselves by saying, 'I was there all the time, and the officials missed me.' Favorite excuses for missing surveillance checkpoints: jacket covered the number took off the shirt with the number hidden in a crowd. ↗

— Joe Henderson

#crowd #defend #excuses #favorite #hidden

There was a possibility I could have been under surveillance. ↗

— Julius Rosenberg

#could #i #possibility #surveillance #under

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. ↗

— Otto Schily

#certain degree #degree #determine #expanded #facilities

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe. ↗

— Agnes Smedley

#everybody #feel #never #russia #safe

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

— Bruce Sterling

#between #distinction #everywhere #general #i

For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA. ↗

— Ron Wyden

#national-security #nba #secrets #surveillance #dreams

If we had failed to pursue the facts as far as they led, we would have denied the public any knowledge of an unprecedented scheme of political surveillance and sabotage. ↗

— Katharine Graham

#as far as #denied #facts #failed #far

It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That’s why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America. ↗

— Ron Wyden

#law #national-security #secrets #surveillance #change

We have seen segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action, adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as "vacuum cleaners", sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings. Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data. And once intelligence has been collected, there are strong pressures to use it against the target. ↗

— Church Committee

#data #national-security #predictions #prescience #secrecy

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like. ↗

— William O. Douglas

#corporate-culture #corporations #encroachment #freedom #government