Quotes About Surveillance

Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata. People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people, he said. It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people – we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.

Obama was particularly offended, as he put it, that "the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans without judicial approval." Justifying

When Obama took office, there had been only one U.S. drone strike in Yemen, in November 2002.6 By 2012 a drone strike was reported in Yemen every six days. As of August 2015, more than 490 people had been killed in drone strikes in Yemen alone.

I didn't realize we were being watched. We were all being watched

He said the government was always listening and that anything you had to say you should say in person.

People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where the police strut around in jackboots; it's a country where the police can do anything they like. Similarly, a security state is one in which the security establishment can do anything it likes.

Big Brother sounded like a silly stunt and that's what it is.

The United States is the first nation to regularly conduct strikes using remotely piloted aircraft in an armed conflict. Other nations also possess this technology. Many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it.

Espionage is the world's second oldest profession.

Our side has agents. Their side has spies.

The worst tyrannies were the ones where a government required its own logic on every embedded node.

Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.

Thanks, for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business. Thanks, for a nation of finks.

Surveillance is the business model of the Internet.

To make a long story short . . . there's nothing like having the boss walk in.

The fact is that a car used by Gerry Adams and myself during the course of the Mitchell review was bugged by elements within British military intelligence.

Can I tell you how strange it is to look in your rearview mirror and see guys in cars tailing you?

The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place.

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly?

Take warn­ing, Miller! The Board has reports on your eccentricities.

Another person wearing a hood—a probe shield.

When they want you they already have you; all they need is the paperwork.

Malcolm was watching everything, looking around unobtrusively, and as the speaker began again, he noticed something: the armed police had quietly vanished. There'd been a man at each of the six exits. Now there were none.

But heaven knows there are enough policemen about. They're like a plague of cockroaches. You can't move without stepping on them.