Mass Surveillance Quotes

Internet exchanges and internet service providers - international fiber optic landing points - these are the key tools that governments go after in order to enable their programs of mass surveillance. If they want to be able to watch the entire population of a country instead of a single individual, you have to go after those bulk interchanges. ~ Edward Snowden

Love and Freedom of Thoughts is a fast-acting antidote against the misanthropic cold sword of mass surveillance. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many. ~ Edward Snowden

These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power. ~ Edward Snowden

Is mass surveillance worth it when its fiercest advocates can only say that it "contributed to our understanding" of cases "at the margins"? ~ Julia Angwin

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. ~ Edward Snowden

Mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power. ~ Glenn Greenwald

There is an uncomfortable willingness among privacy campaigners to discriminate against mass surveillance conducted by the state to the exclusion of similar surveillance conducted for profit by large corporations. Partially, this is a vestigial ethic from the Californian libertarian origins of online pro-privacy campaigning. Partially, it is a symptom of the superior public relations enjoyed by Silicon Valley technology corporations, and the fact that those corporations also provide the bulk of private funding for the flagship digital privacy advocacy groups, leading to a conflict of interest.


At the individual level, many of even the most committed privacy campaigners have an unacknowledged addiction to easy-to-use, privacy-destroying amenities like Gmail, Facebook, and Apple products. As a result, privacy campaigners frequently overlook corporate surveillance abuses. When they do address the abuses of companies like Google, campaigners tend to appeal to the logic of the market, urging companies to make small concessions to user privacy in order to repair their approval ratings. There is the false assumption that market forces ensure that Silicon Valley is a natural government antagonist, and that it wants to be on the public's side - that profit-driven multinational corporations partake more of the spirit of democracy than government agencies.


Many privacy advocates justify a predominant focus on abuses by the state on the basis that th ~ Julian Assange

History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. ~ Glenn Greenwald

I don't think there's anything, any threat out there today that anyone can point to, that justifies placing an entire population under mass surveillance. ~ Edward Snowden

The majority of terrorist attacks that have been disrupted in the United States have been disrupted due to things like the Time Square bomber, who was caught by a hotdog vendor, not a mass surveillance program, not a cyber-espionage campaign. ~ Edward Snowden

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture. ~ Glenn Greenwald

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. ~ Glenn Greenwald

I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath to do that because they think if it's a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that you're supposed to take. And I think it's what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries. ~ Michael Moore

There's a series of sculptures there by Michelangelo that you should see. They are called The Captives. Out of a great formless mass of stone, the figures of slaves emerge: heads, shoulders, torsos, straining toward freedom but still held fast in the stone. There are souls like that, Reyes. There are souls that try to carve themselves from their own formlessness. ~ Mary Doria Russell

The politicians think that I have not included enough of them; the nonpoliticians think that I have gone back to the old ways; and the mass public groups think I have forgotten them. ~ Corazon Aquino

The only still center of my life is Macbeth. To go back to doing this bloody, crazed, insane mass-murderer is a huge relief after trying to get my cell phone replaced. ~ Patrick Stewart

Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty. ~ Jeffrey Sachs

The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom. ~ Rudolph Rummel

Well, you know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn't matter how others see you. ~ Wendy Mass

Effective prevention of mass killings is incremental and its heroes are invisible. ~ Timothy Snyder

I regard the USA mass population routinely flip-flopping between the Republican and Democratic parties as a form of insanity. ~ Steven Magee

Spiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative! ~ Hilaire Belloc

The supreme trick of mass insanity is that it persuades you that the only abnormal person is the one who refuses to join in the madness of others, the one who tries vainly to resist. We will never understand totalitarianism if we do not understand that people rarely have the strength to be uncommon. ~ Eugene Ionesco

Arnold's place in history will be as the man who took golf from being a game for the few to a sport for the masses. He was the catalyst who made that happen. ~ Jack Nicklaus

Classification of Christian children, as they plan it, are to be used as human sacrifice. Where? Within the black mass ceremonies, they will participate in any kind of sexual orgy, some to be kept as sexual slaves. ~ Serge Monast

The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning. ~ Geoff Mulgan

If we humans can so easily wash the blood of our fellow humans off our hands, then what hope is there for sparing our future generations from a repeat of the genocides and mass killings of the past? ~ Thomas Buergenthal

However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the mass conscription of the two world wars. The most advanced armies of the twenty-first century rely far more on cutting-edge technology. Instead of limitless cannon fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers, even smaller numbers of special forces super-warriors and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces 'manned' by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the twentieth century, and generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

You can mass-produce hardware; you cannot mass-produce software - you cannot mass-produce the human mind. ~ Michio Kaku

In many ways Nazism was antithetical to what the great mass of Germans said they admired - and certainly to what they paid homage. It was noisy, undisciplined, vainglorious; its leader was a half-educated posturing foreigner. For a decade the National Socialists were regarded as hoodlums, as part of the breakdown of what had been, if anything, an excessively ordered society before. ~ Eugene Davidson

No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass. ~ John Marshall

The masses are everywhere they know how to do things: they have sane and deadly angers for sane and deadly things. ~ Charles Bukowski

I like to see the long line we each leave behind, and I sometimes imagine my whole life that way, as though each step was a stitch, as though I was a needle leaving a trail of thread that sewed together the world as I went by, crisscrossing others' paths, quilting it all together in some way that matters even though it can hardly be traced. A meandering line sutures together the world in some new way, as though walking was sewing and sewing was telling a story and that story was your life.

A thread now most often means a line of conversation via e-mail or other electronic means, but thread must have been an even more compelling metaphor when most people witnessed or did the women's work that is spinning. It is a mesmerizing art, the spindle revolving below the strong thread that the fingers twist out of the mass of fiber held on an arm or a distaff. The gesture turns the cloudy mass of fiber into lines with which the world can be tied together. Likewise the spinning wheel turns, cyclical time revolving to draw out the linear time of a thread. The verb to spin first meant just this act of making, then evolved to mean anything turning rapidly, and then it came to mean telling a tale.

Strands a few inches long twine together into a thread or yarn that can go forever, like words becoming stories. The fairy-tale heroines spin cobwebs, straw, nettles into whatever is necessary to survive. Scheherazade forestalls her death by telling a story that is like a thre ~ Rebecca Solnit

How happy is that guardian angel who accompanies a soul to Holy Mass! ~ John Vianney

Growing up under the heavy hand of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, it was drummed into me that attending weekly mass was not an option. It was a must to avoid eternal damnation, which was not a prospect filled with many positives. Hell fire was perpetual, and no parole would be offered. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Therefore the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to
realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers
from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single
man becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as does the "cogito" in the
realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude.
It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel - therefore we exist. ~ Albert Camus

Writing is a lonely pursuit. The only thing working is imagination and hands.
The only difference between writing and masturbation is one is presumably intended for a mass audience. ~ Mark Bell

Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West. ~ Walter Lippmann

Shock stung her into a quivering mass of pleasure when he captured one of her hands and fed it down to the velvet-smooth thickness of his penis, then urged her to stroke it between her legs. ~ Michelle Reid

The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit. ~ Richard K. Morgan

For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive. ~ Arianna Huffington

Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion. ~ Mary Barnett Gilson

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

There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few. ~ Bell Hooks

War is a total social phenomenon. In this respect, Clausewitz's analysis is a precursor of Durkheim's sociology. Clausewitz has things to teach us about "mass" violence and contagion. ~ Rene Girard