11 quotes
History leaves no doubt that collective coercion and control is both the intent and effect of state surveillance.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, we discovered, its enabling force. Transparency is the only antidote.
No Place to Hide (2014)
To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Over the pasty decades, the fear of terrorism—stoked by consistent exaggerations of the actual threat—has been exploited by US leaders to justify a weird array of extremist policies.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Nobody needed the US Constitution to guarantee press freedom so that journalists could befriend, amplify and glorify political leaders; the guarantee was necessary so that journalists could do the opposite.
No Place to Hide (2014)
But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers [by Huawei], foreign organizations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones.
No Place to Hide (2014)
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.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Companies like Booz Allen Hamilton and AT&T employ hordes of former top government officials, while hordes of current top defense officials are past (and likely future) employees of those same corporations. Constantly growing the surveillance state is a way to ensure that the government funds keep flowing, that the revolving door stays greased.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Thus, for all the government's denials, the NSA has no substantial constraints on whom it can spy and how. [...] The NSA is the definitive rogue agency: empowered to do whatever it wants with very little control, transparency, or accountability.
No Place to Hide (2014)
More remarkable is the fact that in country after country, revelations that the NSA was spying on hundreds of millions of their citizens produced little more than muted objections from their political leadership. True indignation came gushing forward only once those leaders understood that they, and not just their citizens, had been targeted as well.
No Place to Hide (2014)
Through a carefully cultivated display of intimidation to anyone who contemplated a meaningful challenge, the [United States] government had striven to show people around the world that its power was constrained by neither law nor ethics, neither morality nor the Constitution: look what we can do and will do to those who impede our agenda.
No Place to Hide (2014)