The National Security Agency’s capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.

~ Frank Church

Frank Church 1975 Abuse National Security Orwellian Privacy Senate Senator Surveillance

So many of the things I invented I honestly did for fun, out of some perverse game of whether or not they’d work, whether people would use them. I mean, it was like setting up a guillotine in the public square. You don’t expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Fun Guillotine Inventions Social Media Surveillance

That’s what’s new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that’s over. Completion is the end. We’re closing the circle around everyone—it’s a totalitarian nightmare.

~ Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers Opting Out Social Media Surveillance The Circle Totalitarianism

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that’s holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It’s gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it’s trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren’t doing it in the streets.” He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. “Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule—meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean.

~ Daniel Suarez

Daniel Suarez Cellphones Protests Social Media Surveillance

I'm always under surveillance from both the NSA, the Russian KGB, and the Bulgarian Army, so I'm the most invisible.

~ Stefan D

Stefan D Army Invisible Kgb Military Nlp Notability Nsa Surveillance

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

~ Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden Free Press Free Speech Information Age Internet Mass Surveillance Nothing To Hide Nsa Privacy Snowden Surveillance

Since the 1970s, there has been a continual tendency to over-estimate the surveillance capacities of new technologies. In the sense of the physical invasion of privacy, surveillance comprises five sequential events: the capacity to observe; the act of observation; comprehension of what is seen; intervention on the basis of that knowledge; and a consequent change of behaviour by the subject. Too often the final four have been assumed from the possibility of the first.

~ David Vincent

David Vincent Internet Privacy Surveillance

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. ... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.

~ Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan Censorship Information Age Internet Microchip Surveillance Totalitarianism

The mistake we make is in thinking rape isn’t premeditated, that it happens by accident somehow, that you’re drunk and you run into a girl who’s also drunk and half-asleep on a bench and you sidle up to her and things get out of hand and before you know it, you’re being accused of something you’d never do. But men who rape are men who watch for the signs of who they believe they can rape. Rape culture isn’t a natural occurrence; it thrives thanks to the dedicated attention given to women in order to take away their security. Rapists exist on a spectrum, and maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink.

~ Scaachi Koul

Scaachi Koul Alcohol Conspiracy Drinking Intoxication Party Culture Rape Rape Culture Surveillance

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the war on terror?

~ Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Civil Liberties Civil Rights Osama Bin Laden Surveillance Terrorism War On Terror

You'll have the right to be angry about Vault 7 only after you boycott dragnet surveillance data providers like Google, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook and LinkedIn. The true threat is coming from the private sector surveillance profiteers.

~ James Scott

James Scott Cybersecurity Dragnet Facebook Google Icit James Scott Linkedin Microsoft Security Skype Surveillance Vault 7 Vault7 Wikileaks

If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security.

~ Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier False Positives Paranoia Security See Something Say Something Social Control Surveillance

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

~ Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler Want Surveillance Without

Bounty hunters these days - because everything is so sophisticated with computers and surveillance, it doesn't have to be a one-man-army-type guy who goes in and kicks a door down.

~ Mickey Rourke

Mickey Rourke Door Down Surveillance

Surveillance cameras might reduce crime - even though the evidence here is mixed - but no studies show that they result in greater happiness of everyone involved.

~ Evgeny Morozov

Evgeny Morozov Crime Surveillance Here

No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.

~ Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden Know Surveillance Point

Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

~ Mike Pompeo

Mike Pompeo Surveillance Should