Surveillance Quotes

“There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

“Ultimately, saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.”
― Edward Snowden

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

“The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
― Michel Foucault

“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.”
― William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion

“Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line.

There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries.”
― Edward Snowden

“If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic power ... [T]he hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement afford no security. The companion whom you most trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, all are tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follie; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides — where fear officiates as accuser and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard ... Do not let us be told, Sir, that we excite a fervour against foreign aggression only to establish a tyranny at home; that [...] we are absurd enough to call ourselves ‘free and enlightened’ while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity and establish a code compared to which the ordeal is wise and the trial by battle is merciful and just."

[opposing the Alien & Sedition bills of 1798, in Congress]”
― Edward Livingston

“Back then, she had to worry about the government tapping her phone. It still probably does, but all the other stuff's been outsourced. Now, instead of just a COINTELPRO operation, she’s got to worry about that and some dude stalking her relatives from his mother’s basement, and kids bombarding her with death threats because it makes them feel like part of the (terrorist) gang, and a troll farm in Russia using the Center as the next cause célèbre to whip up Nazis. All the people who really are a threat to the country; somehow they’ve been convinced to do its dirty work, more or less for free. She would admire it if it weren’t so damn horrific.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became

“It’s this place, this wretched place, where they never stop watching, where they never stop judging. It makes monsters out of us.”
― Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station, Drifting

“Wo ein Klima der Überwachung und Bespitzelung herrscht, kann ein freier und offener demokratischer Prozess nicht stattfinden.”
― Heribert Prantl, Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht

“Allen europäischen Staaten voran ist besonders der britische hinsichtlich seiner Schuldvermutung, die in den atemlos fortschrittsgläubigen Überwachungsszenarien aufscheint, ganz und gar paranoid geworden und darin dem Künstler Damien Hirst ähnlich, der in seinem Buch "Theories" berichtet, dass ihn in den 90er Jahren grenzenlose Panik befiel, als ihm klar wurde, dass seine Augen eine nur verschwindend geringe Prozentzahl seiner Körperoberfläche ausmachen und er ansonsten eingeschlossen in einem vollständig finsteren Kasten sitzt.”
― Olaf Arndt

“Nirgendwo werden aus vermeintlichen Absurditäten so schnell Normalitäten wie auf dem Gebiet der Inneren Sicherheit.”
― Heribert Prantl, Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht

“Es soll keine Geheimnisse mehr geben, sagen die neuen Überwachungstheoretiker und meinen damit etwas recht Interessantes: dass die Ära, in der Geheimnisse zählten, in der Geheimnisse ihre Macht über das Leben von menschen ausüben konnten [...], vorbei ist; nicht, was sich zu wissen lohnt, kann nicht innerhalb von Sekunden und ohne großen Aufwand aufgedeckt werden; das Privatleben ist im Grunde ein Ding der Vergangenheit.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Tagebuch eines schlimmen Jahres

“Die Herren der Information haben die Poesie aus dem Auge verloren, wo Worte eine Bedeutung haben können, die sehr von der im Lexikon angegebenen abweicht, wo der metaphorische Funke der Dechiffrierfunktion immer einen Sprung voraus ist, wo eine andere, unerwartete Interpretation stets möglich ist.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Tagebuch eines schlimmen Jahres

“The insidious nature of government surveillance extends beyond the violation of privacy; it corrodes the foundations of trust essential for a healthy democracy. When citizens are constantly under the watchful eye of those in power, it creates an environment ripe for abuse and manipulation. The emotional toll is immeasurable, breeding a culture of fear and self-censorship as individuals navigate a world where every action is potentially scrutinized. Examples from history, such as the misuse of surveillance by authoritarian regimes, serve as stark warnings against the encroachment of unchecked power into the private lives of citizens. The unlawfulness of such surveillance is not just a legal matter but a moral imperative to safeguard the very essence of individual freedom.”
― James William Steven Parker

“Government surveillance, with its invasive reach into the private lives of citizens, is an egregious violation of the principles that underpin a free and just society. The emotional toll is staggering, as the constant awareness of being monitored erodes the sense of autonomy and security essential for individual well-being. Trust, a cornerstone of any healthy democracy, is shattered, breeding an environment of suspicion and fear. The historical resonance of unlawful surveillance, from oppressive regimes to modern controversies, serves as a stark reminder of the perilous consequences when the state oversteps its bounds. The unlawfulness of such surveillance is not just a legal matter but a moral imperative to safeguard the sanctity of private lives and preserve the emotional health of a free society.”
― James William Steven Parker

“...even in a state where surveillance seems total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can always radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about some other system, some better way to run society.”
― Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

“If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those ideas have to be poisoned. That requires not just surveillance, and not merely a political system that defends against liberal ideas. It also requires an offensive plan, a narrative that damages the idea of democracy, wherever it is being used, anywhere in the world.”
― Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

“Either Internet or Privacy
(Cybersecurity 101, Sonnet)

The purpose of a strong password
is not to keep your accounts safe,
but to keep your accounts moderately
secure against common scammers, however,

if you become a target of actual hackers,
or a person of interest to the government,
have no doubt, your internet
activities are already monitored.

Paranoia of cybersecurity only ruins sanity,
it does nothing to establish security.
No technology that's connected
to the internet is unhackable,
either you can have internet or privacy.

So, don't post family pictures online,
keep your passwords moderately complex,
refrain from consentless content,
cloud is the last place to be private.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“The purpose of a strong password is not to keep your accounts safe, but to keep your accounts moderately secure against common scammers, however, if you become a target of actual hackers, or a person of interest to the government, have no doubt, your internet activities are already monitored.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Either Internet or Privacy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Don't post family pictures online,
keep your passwords moderately complex,
refrain from consentless content,
cloud is the last place to be private.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“There's someone watching me out there,' he said. 'Out in the sea. They have grey eyes -- grey as the sea. They're looking at me.'

"The owl was a baker's daughter,' said Harry.

"Yes, she was,' said Jon, unsurprised at this disclosure.”
― Alice Thomas Ellis, The Inn at the Edge of the World

“An as he skellied intae the white bleeze, a troop o surveillance puggies advanced in heelstergowdie formation alang the corridor roof, skited by owre his heid an wi a clatter o metallic cleuks, skittered awa eastwards doon the shadowy vennel.”
― Matthew Fitt, But n Ben A-Go-Go

“Contre cette dystopie que préparent ceux qui prétendent nous gouverner, nous appelons à une résistance systématique.”
― Félix Tréguer, Technopolice: La surveillance policière à l’ère de l´intelligence artificielle

“The internet was supposed to open up the world and make our small worlds bigger. Instead of a wide-angle lens, it turned into an electron microscope — narrowing everything down to timelines, algorithms, and micro-issues, leaving us in a darkened room, eyes pressed to the glass, unable to see the walls closing in.”
― Lawrence Nault