#surveillance

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

Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics. ↗

— Bill Kristol

#bush #counterterrorism #country #critics #defend

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

Well, all these stars have their houses swept quite regularly by people who work in the surveillance security business. They come in and they look for bugs and things. ↗

— Peter Weir

#business #come #houses #look #people

China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities. ↗

— Ai Weiwei

#attitudes #authorities #censored #china #chinese

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. ↗

— Cornel West

#brown #catastrophe #complex #discourse #ghettos

However, this court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret. ↗

— Colleen McMahon

#law #national-security #orwellian #surveillance #surveillance-society

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. ↗

— United Nations

#censorship #communication #encroachment #freedom-of-opinion #freedom-of-speech

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." [Dissenting, Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#freedom #government #privacy #surveillance #age