Glenn Greenwald Quotes - Page 3

He's the President—it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.

It is simply an invariable truth in the history of politics, in the history of government, that whenever a new power is acquired in the name of some threat, it always - not sometimes, not often, not usually -it always extends beyond its original application, beyond its original justification.

Arming domestic police forces with paramilitary weaponry will ensure their systematic use even in the absence of a terrorist attack on US soil; they will simply find other, increasingly permissive uses for those weapons.

The more fear confrontational activism can put into the heart of the political class, the better.

It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice.

I'd like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.

As always, imagine how great the press corps would be if it devoted 1/1000th the energy to dissecting non-sex political wrongdoing

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible.

A lot of these people are Iraqis fighting for control of their own government. Maybe there's an argument to make that outside forces that go in and start bombing that country or invading that country are actually terrorists more so than the people in the country.

Nobody really even knows with whom the US is at war, or where. Everyone just knows that it is vital that it continue in unlimited form indefinitely.

They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.

What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.

No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

As the American Muslim community gets a little bit freer in terms of not being under the thumb of that kind of oppressive mentality, there is going to be some internal dissent. When you are consciously oppressed, you tend to sort of band together and unite because there's a necessity to do so. And that as that proceeds, some of those difference get more into the fore and I think that's the reason you are seeing some internal dissension as a byproduct of the fact that there is not this kind of immediate urgency to unify against this kind of onslaught because that onslaught is refuted.

The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.

But when Warren has spoken on national security, she has invariably spouted warmed-over, banal Democratic hawk tripe of the kind that she just recited about Israel and Gaza. During her Senate campaign, for instance, she issued wildly militaristic – and in some cases clearly false – statements about Iran and its nuclear program that would have been comfortable on the pages of The Weekly Standard.

It’s just simply the fact that the NSA does not think anybody should be able to communicate anywhere on the Earth without them being able to invade it.

When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.

There's a huge cost to freedom in letting people talk about how you print these plastic guns or letting them say these things about arming for tyranny. There's also a cost to letting the government say these ideas can't be expressed, this is treason. It's difficult.

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

The government usually announces it killed a Big Terrorist 5 or 6 different times before they're dead - they're almost like cats.