National Security Agency Quotes

According to a former drone operator for the military's Joint Special Operations Command, the National Security Agency often identifies targets for drone strikes based on controversial metadata analysis and cell phone tracking technologies - an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. Rather than confirming a target's identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using. ~ Jeremy Scahill

Critics have stepped up their attacks on the President for authorizing the National Security Agency to listen to international communications of known al Qaeda members or affiliated terrorists during a time of war. The American people expect their leaders to stay a step ahead of the enemy, and the National Security Agency authorization is a critical tool in the War on Terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time. ~ Scott McClellan

What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the "enemy of promises" as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball? What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness project the Baconian slogan Scientia est potentia? Didn't I read that somewhere in Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency? Has Discipline and Punish become the bedtime reading of Mr. Ridge? ~ Bruno Latour

When the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. ~ John Perkins

Depending on the contemporary mood, Orwell oscillates from Saint George to George the Seer to George the Sage. What other thinker has been both so fervidly claimed and derided by both the left and right? Who else except Kafka do we credit with having seen the sinister future? When the NSA spying scandal broke in June, Amazon sales of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four vaulted more than 6000 percent. The connection of Big Brother with the NSA might have been hysterical and spurious, but it was also testament to our sentimental, kneejerk affection for Orwell, to the fact that he remains the default scribe whenever our paranoia is fondled by the ominous machinations of realpolitik. The utter clarity and goodness of his intellect seem something of a miracle when one considers how many of his fellow writers botched the most pressing moral and political tests of their time. He could smell bullshit and blood a continent away: When a passel of leftist intellectuals was hailing the Soviet Union as humankind's only hope, Orwell was persistent in pointing out that Stalin was a monocratic lunatic. ~ William Giraldi

I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing. ~ Dan Brown

The director of the National Security Agency, General Michael V. Hayden, had told tens of thousands of his officers in a video message: "We are going to keep America free by making Americans feel safe again. ~ Tim Weiner

Just because you're 40, you don't have to decide whether God exists ... when you're already worrying that the National Security Agency is reading your emails, it's better not to know whether yet another entity is watching you. ~ Pamela Druckerman

President Bush even authorized the National Security Agency to monitor -
without preclearance from a judge - phone calls
and e-mails of U.S. citizens. In ~ Todd Donovan

Given the incredible power that new technologies give both governments and terrorists we need a strong American Civil Liberties Union and a strong National Security Agency. In a cyberage, you should want an A.C.L.U. watching the watchers. But you should also want an N.S.A. watching the superempowered, cyberempowered angry people. Civil liberties absolutists may think the 9/11 era is over, but do the jihadist fanatics who use Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp as their command and control system? We need to worry about Big Terrorist and Big Criminal as much as Big Brother if we want to prevent another 9/11. ~ Anonymous

USA Freedom Actdid, however, take away a valuable tool that allowed the National Security Agency and other law - and other intelligence agencies to quickly and rapidly access phone records and match them up with other phone records to see who terrorists have been calling. ~ Marco Rubio

described the relatively low number of fatalities as a miracle.1 President Bill Clinton ordered his National Security Council to coordinate the response. Government agencies swung into action to find the culprits.The Counterterrorist Center located at the CIA combed its files and queried sources around the world. The National Security Agency (NSA), the huge Defense Department signals collection agency, ramped up its communications intercept network and searched its databases for clues.2 The New York Field Office of the FBI took control of the local investigation and, in the end, set a pattern for future management of terrorist incidents. Four features of this episode have significance for the story of 9/11. 71 ~ Anonymous

We need to put the security back in the National Security Agency. We can't have the national surveillance agency. ~ Edward Snowden

In America, you have the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. You've got drones now being considered for domestic surveillance. You have the National Security Agency building the world's giantest spy center. ~ Heather Brooke

The attorney general also spelled out some of the authorities the FBI would use under the Patriot Act, which passed the Senate that same day: capturing e-mail addresses, tapping cell phones, opening voice-mails, culling credit card and bank account numbers from the Internet. All of this would be done under law, he said, with subpoenas and search warrants. But the Patriot Act was not enough for the White House. On October 4, Bush commanded the National Security Agency to work with the FBI in a secret program code-named Stellar Wind. The ~ Tim Weiner

I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. ~ John Perkins

So, in 1993, in what was probably the first salvo of the first Crypto War, there was concern coming from the National Security Agency and the FBI that encryption would soon be incorporated into lots of communications devices, and that that would cause wiretaps to go dark. There was not that much commercial use of encryption at that point. Encryption, particularly for communications traffic, was mostly something done by the government. ~ Matt Blaze

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents. ~ Barton Gellman

We've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society. ~ Edward Snowden

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Our ports are a vital link in national security and it is extremely dangerous to be considering their sale to the United Arab Emirates government. ~ Joe Donnelly

You can't tell me that all the wars we are fighting are in America's national security interest. ~ Todd Rokita

It's basic due diligence to make sure that whenever a foreign entity acquires a controlling interest in a U.S. company that national security isn't threatened. ~ Dave Reichert

When the American president and his national security adviser speak of fighting terrorism alongside Russia, what they are proposing to the American people is terror management: the exploitation of real, dubious, and simulated terror attacks to bring down democracy. The Russian recap of the first telephone call between the president and Vladimir Putin is telling: The two men "shared the opinion that it is necessary to join forces against the common enemy number one: international terrorism and extremism. ~ Timothy Snyder

Is real, it is serious, it is growing, and it constitutes one of the greatest threats to our national security and, indeed, to global security. ~ John O. Brennan

From time to time, the irresponsible acts of the Cuban government remind us that this is far more than about the freedom of one country, but it really is about the stability and security of the region and the national security interests of the United States. ~ Mel Martinez

It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

People were concerned about national security, and that precluded us from having the opportunity to break through on the issues that we cared most about - the economy, education and health care. ~ Tom Daschle

John Kerry, who says he doesn't like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security. ~ Zell Miller

We are all going to die. When it happens in such a drastic, inhuman way, which we've been seeing in Africa, this is crime on its highest level. It is affecting not only the security of the national parks, it is affecting the people in communities that live around the national parks. In terms of security for wildlife and our society, it's an incredibly alarming situation, and we need to address that. ~ Veronika Varekova

History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security. ~ Phyllis Schlafly

We must pose the familiar question about how far our civil liberties have been eroded by the national security state ... Somehow it is always a choice between habeas corpus and hundreds of corpses. ~ Niall Ferguson

I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? ~ Robert Redford

I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion. ~ Glenn Reynolds

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and avoidance of large federal deficits on the other; it is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, as long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance the budget - just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. In short, the paradoxical truth is that the tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. ~ Ronald Reagan

National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail. So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that's a national security matter. Well, you're supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government. More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something. ~ Ben Bradlee

Tory
frowned at his backpack on the floor and the way he kept it within easy reach.
"What's in that backpack, by the way? You're always guarding it like it
holds national security secrets or something."
"Dirty
underwear."
She
rolled her eyes. "Thanks so much for that image."
"You
asked. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

There can never be complete agreement on international control and the administration of atomic energy or on general disarmament until there is a modification of the traditional concept of national sovereignty. For as long as atomic energy and armaments are considered a vital part of national security no nation will give more than lip service to international treaties. ~ Albert Einstein

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. ~ Bryan Fischer

The United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret. ~ Robert Parry

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

I felt it was vital to stress the importance of national security in this debate and the need for a clear path to our exit from the European Union. I hope I have achieved both these objectives. ~ Liam Fox

Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on earth as we know it to be. ~ Gordon R. Sullivan

If the Democrats feel they have lost the public's confidence in their stewardship of national security, then the threat of Iran offers a Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, or John Kerry an opportunity to get out front now and pledge support for a united effort - attacking Bush from the right about too tepid a stance rather from the predictable left that we are 'hegemonic' and 'imperialistic' every time we use force abroad. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

We must have systems of checks and balances to make sure that those people who are making critical decisions for our country are held accountable, and nowhere is that more important than in the area of national security. ~ Chris Van Hollen

All of Britain's aid is spent in Britain's national interests, and some of it contributes to Britain's national security as well. ~ Andrew Mitchell

A trial is a powerful vehicle to explain things. It is the most time that anybody spends really thinking about one thing. Unless you are the analyst on the National Security staff that's assigned to monitor Putin, and that's all you do, day in and day out, very few people ever spend the time on a single subject that is spent during trial. ~ David Boies

It is not realistic to put legal constraints on war powers. Law works through general prospective rules that apply to a range of factual situations. International relations and national security are too fluid and unpredictable to be governed by a set of legal propositions that command general assent secured in advance. Laws governing war make us feel more secure but they don't actually make us more secure ~ Eric A. Posner

Why is it when I'm the one shot, I'm a baby, but when it's you, it's a matter of life and death and national security? (Joe)
Because I'm cuter in a short skirt. (Tee) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Clearly, border security has been the top domestic issue of the year, and rightly so. Securing our borders is an essential aspect of our national security. ~ Randy Neugebauer

Monopolizing the right to speak authoritatively about "security" in name of everyone - the ability to evoke the "national interest" or a universal "we" - is at the crux of the practice of power. ~ Gearoid O Tuathail

What's in that backpack, by the way? You're always guarding it like it holds national security secrets or something. (Tory) Dirty underwear. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a (flag) pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest ... ~ Barack Obama