Quotes from Glenn Greenwald

society pays great attention to the motives of dissenters, but none to those who submit to our institutions, either by ensuring that their actions remain concealed or by using any other means. Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state. In

for a thirty-day period ending in February 2013, one unit of the NSA collected more than three billion pieces of communication data from US communication systems

in the face of severe injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure. Philosophy

For many kids, the Internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that works only if we're able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us.

The ability to eavesdrop on people's communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused.

In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." After

Similarly it is possible that the system itself is sick, even though the actors within the organization are behaving in accord with organizational etiquette and respecting the internal bonds of trust. That

according to the NSA documents, provided the agency with direct access to their servers as part of PRISM: Facebook, Google, Apple, YouTube, Skype, and the rest.

The true measure of a society´s freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats its good loyalists. We shouldn´t have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to be free from state surveillance.

The perceptions and pronouncements of human beings are inherently subjective. Every news article is the product of all sorts of highly subjective cultural, nationalistic, and political assumptions. And all journalism serves one faction's interest or another's. The

The very idea that reporters should be free of opinions is far from some time-honored requirement of the profession; in fact, it is a relatively new concoction that has the effect, if not the intent, to neuter journalism. This

there is no check or limit on the NSA's bulk collection of metadata, thanks to the government's interpretation of the Patriot Act—an interpretation so broad that even the law's original authors were shocked to learn how it was being used.

I found the sheer vastness of the spying system genuinely shocking, all the more so because it had clearly been implemented with virtually no accountability, no transparency, and no limits. The

authors had analyzed fifty cases of purported "Islamic terrorist plots" against the United States, only to conclude that "virtually all of the perpetrators were 'incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish.

Se prego in cuor mio che la consapevolezza e il dibattito pubblico porteranno a una riforma, so anche che le politiche degli uomini mutano nel tempo, e persino la Costituzione viene sovvertita quando la fame di potere lo richiede. Traendo insegnamento dalla storia, dunque, non si parli più di fiducia nell'uomo, ma si vincoli quest'ultimo, contro il mal fare, con le catene della crittografia.

This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being "left alone," is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.

Another BOUNDLESS INFORMANT document detailed the international data collected in a single thirty-day period from Germany (500 million), Brazil (2.3 billion), and India (13.5 billion). And yet other files showed collection of metadata in cooperation with the governments of France (70 million), Spain (60 million), Italy (47 million), the Netherlands (1.8 million), Norway (33 million), and Denmark (23 million).

most politically powerful right-wing families have an almost perfect record of advocating numerous wars while ensuring that their own sons and daughters do not risk their lives to fight in them.

Most remarkably, Americans now considered the danger of surveillance of greater concern than the danger of terrorism:

Mass surveillance by the state is therefore inherently repressive, even in the unlikely case that it is not abused by vindictive officials to do things like gain private information about political opponents. Regardless of how surveillance is used or abused, the limits it imposes on freedom are intrinsic to its existence.

Snowden had been clear from our first conversation about his rationale for distrusting the establishment media with his story, repeatedly referring to the New York Times's concealment of NSA eavesdropping. He had come to believe that the paper's concealment of that information may very well have changed the outcome of the 2004 election. "Hiding that story changed history," he said.

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

the NSA databases "store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online." The agency claims this personal information won't be abused, "but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly.

Radical expansions of power are often introduced in this way, by persuading people that they affect just a specific, discrete group.