“Some of the surveillance was ostensibly devoted to terrorism suspects. But great quantities of the programs manifestly had nothing to do with national security. The documents left no doubt that the NSA was equally involved in economic espionage, diplomatic spying, and suspicionless surveillance aimed at entire populations. Taken in its entirety, the Snowden archive led to an ultimately simple conclusion: the US government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide. Far from hyperbole, that is the literal, explicitly stated aim of the surveillance state: to collect, store, monitor, and analyze all electronic communication by all people around the globe.”

— Glenn Greenwald , book No Place to Hide

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 94.
No Place to Hide (2014)

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Glenn Greenwald 27

American journalist, lawyer and writer 1967

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“WikiLeaks and Assange have done more to expose the dark machinations and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. Assange, in addition to exposing atrocities and crimes committed by the United States military in our endless wars and revealing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency, their surveillance programs and their interference in foreign elections…And WikiLeaks worked swiftly to save Edward Snowden, who exposed the wholesale surveillance of the American public by the government, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow…”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"Crucifying Julian Assange" (2018)

“Since the revelations of NSA surveillance and mass data collection, Leiderman has consistently referred to this as the “tin foil age.” It is a reference to the days when if someone thought the government was spying on them they would be seen as crazy – the kind of person that would wear a tin foil hat to combat the government surveillance. Now that we are all aware that our government is collecting mass data on so many people, we don’t think the tin foil hat wearing people were quite so crazy [sort of], hence “the tin foil age.””

Jay Leiderman (1971) lawyer

As stated on the Jay Leiderman Law Blog December 11, 2014 http://jayleiderman.com/blog/jay-leiderman-quoted-part-10-tin-foil-as-reality/

“Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 1

“This is generally true: any sizeable piece of program, or even a complete program package, is only a useful tool that can be used in a reliable fashion, provided that the documentation pertinent for the user is much shorter than the program text. If any machine or system requires a very thick manual, its usefulness becomes for that very circumstance subject to doubt!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra, "On the reliability of programs" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD303.html (EWD 303).
Unknown date

“It has been showcased as a tool exclusively meant for disbursement of subsidies and we do not realise that it can also be used for mass surveillance. Can the government … assure us that this Aadhaar card and the data that will be collected under it – biometric, biological, iris scan, finger print, everything put together – will not be misused as has been done by the NSA in the U. S.?”

Tathagata Satpathy (1956) Indian politician

On the Aadhaar project, as quoted in " India's billion-member Aadhaar biometric database raises privacy fears http://in.reuters.com/article/india-aadhaar-privacy-fears-idINKCN0WI2JW" Reuters (16 March 2016)

“With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. [...] A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Picador 2015 edition ISBN 9781250062581, p. 3
No Place to Hide (2014)

“The executive branch has sometimes abused its mandate -- most famously, with the surveillance of Dr. King -- but not as much as the Church Committee would have us believe. The FBI's political spying was not the creation of right-wing reactionaries, and it was not systematically targeted at the innocent grassroots left. It was begun by our most liberal of presidents, FDR, who ordered the surveillance of fascist sympathizers in 1936. The most controversial domestic Counterinteligence Programs (Cointelpro) were actually born in the Kennedy administration, as an attempt to disrupt the Ku Klux Klan. The FBI also disrupted "Black Nationalist Hate Groups," including the Black Panthers. This was not political repression; it was a largely successful effort to deal with violent militant groups.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Uncuff the FBI: Congress Must Undo the Church Committe's Damage (2002)

“Like gun laws, spy laws, courtesy of the Surveillance State, oppress only law-abiding, harmless individuals.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"In the West, the Inmates Run the Asylym," http://praag.org/?p=21073 Praag.org, December 4, 2015.
2010s, 2015

“No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

2014
Source: theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript

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