
New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)
United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 956 (2012) (concurring).
New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)
“But the government collection and storage of such bulk data also creates a potential for abuse.”
2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)
Context: [T]he combination of increased digital information and powerful supercomputers offers intelligence agencies the possibility of sifting through massive amounts of bulk data to identify patterns or pursue leads that may thwart impending threats. It’s a powerful tool. But the government collection and storage of such bulk data also creates a potential for abuse.
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: To my mind the failure resolutely to follow progressive policies is the negation of democracy as well of progress, and spells disaster. But for this very reason I feel concern when progressives act with heedless violence, or go so far and so fast as to invite reaction. The experience of John Brown illustrates the evil of the revolutionary short-cut to ultimate good ends. The liberty of the slave was desirable, but it was not to be brought about by a slave insurrection. The better distribution of property is desirable, but it is not to be brought about by the anarchic form of Socialism which would destroy all private capital and tend to destroy all private wealth. It represents not progress, but retrogression, to propose to destroy capital because the power of unrestrained capital is abused. John Brown rendered a great service to the cause of liberty in the earlier Kansas days; but his notion that the evils of slavery could be cured by a slave insurrection was a delusion analogous to the delusions of those who expect to cure the evils of plutocracy by arousing the baser passions of workingmen against the rich in an endeavor at violent industrial revolution. And, on the other hand, the brutal and shortsighted greed of those who profit by what is wrong in the present system, and the attitude of those who oppose all effort to do away with this wrong, serve in their turn as incitements to such revolution; just as the insolence of the ultra pro-slavery men finally precipitated the violent destruction of slavery.
“The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.”
Inaugural address (March 4, 1841)
Speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829, The Writings of James Madison: 1819-1836 (1910), ed. Galliard Hunt, p. 361
1820s
2000s, Youth Q&A on the U.N. High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda Report (2009)
17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 428
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A
2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)
Context: There was a recognition by all who participated in these reviews that the challenges to our privacy do not come from government alone. Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes; that’s how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically. But all of us understand that the standards for government surveillance must be higher. Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.
As recorded in the, Writings and Speeches Vol 15 page 582 of BAWS. https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/attach/amb/Volume_15.pdf
Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)