Welcome to our collection of Surveillance Quotes, where we delve into the complexities and implications of modern-day surveillance practices. As advancements in technology continue to blur the lines between privacy and security, discussions surrounding surveillance have become more pertinent than ever. From governmental surveillance programs to the monitoring capabilities of social media platforms, the extent to which our lives are observed and recorded raises profound questions about individual freedom, societal control, and the balance of power.
Throughout history, surveillance has been employed for various purposes, ranging from maintaining law and order to exerting influence and power. Whether it’s George Orwell’s dystopian vision in 1984 or contemporary debates over data privacy and mass surveillance, the topic resonates deeply with individuals and societies alike. As we navigate this digital age, understanding the nuances of surveillance and its implications is crucial for shaping policies, fostering public discourse, and safeguarding fundamental rights. Below, you’ll find a curated selection of quotes that offer insights, perspectives, and reflections on the multifaceted nature of surveillance.
Doctors and nurses, with their training and their experiences, they would be able to detect unusual patterns of disease. That’s why we say it is important for every country to have a proper surveillance system. The function of the surveillance system is to detect unusual patterns of diseases. Margaret Chan
Also, with information having just come out at the time about J. Edgar Hoover’s electronic surveillance of Dr. King, it gave greater weight to the statements of those persons who were alleging involvement of the FBI. Louis Stokes
For millennia, men have enslaved women and attempted to appropriate female creative power, re-casting themselves as gods and creators. This assault continues today in the forms of ruthless wealth and mineral extraction, genetic engineering, mass surveillance, and war mongering. Anohni
If we had failed to pursue the facts as far as they led, we would have denied the public any knowledge of an unprecedented scheme of political surveillance and sabotage. Katharine Graham
A more effective international disease surveillance system is essential for global security both against a bioterrorist attack or a naturally occurring disease. Daniel Akaka
The Orwellian vision was about state-sponsored surveillance. Now it’s not just the state, it’s your nosy neighbor, your ex-spouse and people who want to spam you. Howard Rheingold
We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration. Joshua Wong
The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. Michael Hastings
Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed. Mike Pompeo
Research In Motion, the owner of BlackBerry, has been asked by a range of governments to comply with surveillance requirements. Rebecca MacKinnon
Surveillance has long been theorized as a way to control the surveilled – namely, by getting them to police themselves out of fear of being watched. Sarah Jeong
You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people’s Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening. Edward Snowden
You can’t assume any place you go is private because the means of surveillance are becoming so affordable and so invisible. Howard Rheingold
Our movements and feelings are constantly monitored, because surveillance is the business model of the digital age. Katharine Viner
Seeing various aspects of the secret state and surveillance state echoes a long tradition in art of looking at the sublime. Trevor Paglen
The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans’ privacy. But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we’re getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem. Al Franken
Gaza itself is subject to constant aerial surveillance by drones and is rife with informers and collaborators with Israel. Ronen Bergman
There is no better illustration of that crisis than the fact that the president is openly violating our nation’s laws by authorizing the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. John Conyers
One of the downsides of being famous is that folks pay far more attention to you than they should. American celebrities are constantly under surveillance, and every word they say is subject to scrutiny. So, be careful what you wish for if you desire fame. No human being should be a goldfish. Bill O’Reilly
I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building. Edward Snowden
If surveillance, censorship and propaganda are the three pillars of authoritarianism, information, organization and leverage are the counter-pillars of citizen power. And the Internet provides the best and most appropriate infrastructure for strengthening all three. Zeynep Tufekci
Yes, you are under surveillance. Yes, it is odious. Yes, it should bother you. And yes, it’s hard to know how to avoid it. Nick Harkaway
WhatsApp has a consistent history – from zero encryption at its inception to a succession of security issues strangely suitable for surveillance purposes. Pavel Durov
When you try to grasp the way the Western world is going, you see that we are on a ratchet towards a surveillance state, which is coming to include the whole population in its surveillance. This is our reward for accepting the restraints on the way we live now. Tom Stoppard
The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate. Barton Gellman
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 concept of surveillance is ingrained in our beings. God was the original surveillance camera. Hasan M. Elahi
The Internet is the most liberating tool for humanity ever invented, and also the best for surveillance. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. John Perry Barlow
With technology tracking us everywhere we go, ‘cosplay’ might become our best defense against surveillance. Annalee Newitz
In recognising the global problem posed by osteoporosis, WHO sees the need for a global strategy for prevention and control of osteoporosis, focusing on three major functions: prevention, management and surveillance. Gro Harlem Brundtland
I spent a lot of time with the LAPD. I spent six weeks training, weapons training, ride-alongs, surveillance, interviewing them, in all different departments and divisions. Ramon Rodriguez
I don’t have a problem with stepped-up surveillance as long as we follow the rule of law. Bob Beckel
Congress has an obligation to clear the legal fog by passing my bill to require the federal government to obtain a warrant if it wants to conduct aerial surveillance. Suzan DelBene
Surveillance cameras might reduce crime – even though the evidence here is mixed – but no studies show that they result in greater happiness of everyone involved. Evgeny Morozov
The NSA is forbidden to ‘target’ American citizens, green-card holders or companies for surveillance without an individual warrant from a judge. Barton Gellman
The best proof of the high quality of American beef is the continued negative BSE findings supported by the highest surveillance possible. The administration should be working to increase our surveillance of BSE, not scaling it back. Rosa DeLauro
Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place. Al Gore
As we have all said, we understand that electronic surveillance is a vital tool in the war on terror. We all want to know when Osama bin Laden is calling: when he is calling, who he is calling, and what he is saying. Chris Van Hollen
Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions. Bill Gates
The government harasses everything. The government must keep a constant surveillance of all activities by black people in order to maintain their reign over them, especially when they are in a minority. John Kani
We do not take away the powers of surveillance. We do not take away the right and the power of the government to go after those who would do us wrong. Larry Craig
When you look at the big issues post-9/11 in the United States, whether it’s water boarding, warantless wire tapping, surveillance, Gitmo, black sites rendition, all of those have been legal. Nobody has gone to jail for those programs. Matt Apuzzo
There was a possibility I could have been under surveillance. Julius Rosenberg
These thieves defend themselves by saying, ‘I was there all the time, and the officials missed me.’ Favorite excuses for missing surveillance checkpoints: jacket covered the number took off the shirt with the number hidden in a crowd. Joe Henderson
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. Cornel West
Counterintelligence is, in effect, chasing ghosts, which is why the tools used to investigate foreign intelligence activity are secret, like human sources or electronic surveillance. Asha Rangappa
One thing Telegram does is make mass surveillance impossible. Pavel Durov
Foreigners like me have no privacy rights whatsoever. Yet we keep using U.S.-based services all the time, making us a legal target for gathering and storing our private information. Other countries do surveillance as well. But nobody has the global visibility that United States does. Mikko Hypponen
Incidentally, our railroad facilities are under video surveillance by the federal police. However, the federal and state governments will have to determine whether video surveillance shouldn’t be significantly expanded to a certain degree. Otto Schily
While Congress saw some need to loosen the standard in the initial days of a war, it wanted the president to comply with FISA in carrying out surveillance in the United States. Jonathan Turley
If surveillance infiltrates our homes and personal relationships, that is a gross breach of our human and civil rights. David Blunkett
Orwell wasn’t right about where society was in 1984. We haven’t turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us. Ramez Naam
I realize at one point, that I was being followed, and then I began to see the surveillance that was going past the road on my house. And so, these cars began to surveil me. People began to follow me around, and it did, it was very disrupting to think that your privacy was being violated, and for no reason that I could come up with. Gloria Naylor
Surveillance breeds conformity. Glenn Greenwald
What would the infrastructure of the Internet look like if mass surveillance wasn’t its business model? Trevor Paglen
Dr. Esserman, who directs the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, is one of only a few surgeons in the United States willing to put women with D.C.I.S. on active surveillance instead of performing biopsies, lumpectomies or mastectomies. Katie Hafner
The nations of Europe constitute a federative league, a commonwealth of nations which, though it has no central head, is so intimate and elaborate as to subject the action, and sometimes even the internal affairs, of each to surveillance and intervention on the part of all the others. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II
The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack – and we uphold the law in doing so. Raymond Kelly
I’d grown up in the U.K., where the surveillance apparatus went into place in the 1970s in response to the Troubles with the IRA. When I was a kid, we moved to Chicago, and I was surprised to see you could live in a large city in which you didn’t have cameras on every street corner. Jonathan Nolan
Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control. Howard Rheingold
For those Muslim Chinese not in camps, Xinjiang is a surveillance state. Millions of artificial-intelligence-powered cameras use facial- and gait-recognition technologies to monitor individuals, Internet activity is closely tracked and DNA samples are collected. Robert C. O’Brien
In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? Al Gore
Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a ‘like’ button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page. Richard Stallman
Cloud services cut both ways in terms of security: you get off-site backup and disaster recovery, but you entrust your secrets to somebody else’s hands. Doing the latter increases your exposure to government surveillance and the potential for deliberate or inadvertent breaches of your confidential files. Barton Gellman
The United States, like any great power, is always going to have an intelligence operation, and some electronic surveillance is obligatory in the modern world. Jeffrey Toobin
If I were a Chinese dissident, I’d be grateful that Cisco had helped bring the Internet to China, but I’d also be outraged that Cisco may have helped the cops keep me under surveillance and catch me trying to organize protest activities. Rebecca MacKinnon
Bringing an end to mass government surveillance needs to be a central pillar of returning to the principles we have put in jeopardy in the early 21st century. Yochai Benkler
Many of Bush’s defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I’m perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics. Bill Kristol
We can all relate at some level to being fascinated by looking at ourselves. You see it every time little kids walk into a store with surveillance and start dancing and waving at themselves. Mark Rober
We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why. Larry Page
What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common – optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance? Tom Stoppard
As smartphones have allowed us to have our computers, emails, social media feeds, and a full surveillance system in our pockets at all times, stories of the law enforcement’s unease with that have been popping up in the press. And of course, the ones that become viral videos aren’t exactly flattering for law enforcement. Sarah Lacy
I believe that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must be reformed. We must improve the American public’s confidence in, and perception of, our national security programs, by increasing transparency, strengthening oversight, and safeguarding civil liberties. Dutch Ruppersberger
The very first video experience I had was in high school. They brought a black-and-white closed-circuit surveillance camera into the classroom. I will never forget, as a kid, looking at that image. Bill Viola
Surveillance changes history. We know this through examples of corrupt presidents like Nixon. Mikko Hypponen
The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions – like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn’t empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate. John Perry Barlow
NSA surveillance is a complex subject – legally, technically and operationally. Barton Gellman
CCTV is seen either as a symbol of Orwellian dystopia or a technology that will lead to crime-free streets and civil behaviour. While arguments continue, there is very little solid data in the public domain about the costs, quantity and effectiveness of surveillance. Heather Brooke
Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens. Mikko Hypponen
Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Edward Snowden
I’ve always been discreet – more than discreet. When a friend calls, and I’m doing something innocuous like cooking dinner, I tell them I’m reading or running out to the movies. It’s the surveillance I can’t stand. Joshua Cohen
Strong health and disease surveillance systems halt epidemics that take lives, disrupt economies, and pose global health security threats. Tedros Adhanom
On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department’s top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal. Barton Gellman
Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine. Richard Stallman
In China, Internet surveillance has already become a profitable industry. In fact, a growing number of private firms eagerly assist the local police by aggregating this data and presenting it in easy-to-browse formats, allowing humans to pursue more analytical tasks. Evgeny Morozov
Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability. Glenn Greenwald
As digital communications have multiplied, and NSA capabilities with them, the agency has shifted resources from surveillance of individual targets to the acquisition of communications on a planetary scale. Barton Gellman
No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused. Edward Snowden
We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration. We stand with all the free peoples of the world and hope you stand with us in our quest for justice and freedom. Joshua Wong
When you have mass surveillance, it’s impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can’t talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk. Pierre Omidyar
I did surveillance a lot, which sounds exciting, but it never was. Miranda Lambert
It seems to limit you; when you’re working in an office, you’re a creature in a small cell under somebody’s supervision and surveillance. Jack Vance
If you are concerned you are the victim of illegal corporate surveillance, you should seek specialist – and independent – legal advice at once. Robert Rinder
I have no private life, as I am constantly under police surveillance. Ivica Dacic
I don’t think there’s much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere. Bruce Sterling
The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. Edward Snowden
Facebook has long been part of surveillance programs, long before it acquired WhatsApp. Pavel Durov
Well, all these stars have their houses swept quite regularly by people who work in the surveillance security business. They come in and they look for bugs and things. Peter Weir
One of the few things the Air Force did admit to me existed out there presently without admitting that it was Area 51 is this drone called the ‘Beast of Kandahar’ which does not fire missiles, unlike the Predator and the Reaper, but just conducts surveillance. Annie Jacobsen
What a jolly thing military surveillance is! Belle Boyd