Charles M. Blow Quotes

Someone recently talked about mass surveillance and the NSA revelations as being the atomic moment for computer scientists. The atomic bomb was the moral moment for physicists. Mass surveillance is the same moment for computer scientists, when they realize that the things they produce can be used to harm a tremendous number of people.

I was thinking about how people were upset about the information that came out from Snowden about the NSA - many people were upset, including myself. But I was kind of surprised by how little we did about it - how little fighting we did.

I wish I could say I was shocked at the reports the NSA is secretly spying on the private phone calls of millions of Verizon customers. However, this is a predictable result of a government that continues to erode our liberties while promising some glimmering hope of security.

If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide from the giant surveillance apparatus the government's been hiding.

The TSA tears through your bags at the airport and the NSA watches what books you buy and what you say over the telephone and online. It doesn't feel like anything is private anymore.

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.

One can doubt the sincerity of the technology community’s outrage over the NSA’s surveillance practices—doubt, for example, that the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose company reportedly stores petabytes’ worth of data about its billion-plus active monthly users, was shocked at the thought of mass data collection.

The NSA is not looking through people's address books and Visa bills and violating the rights of average citizens. That's not what the NSA does.

It didn't really change my opinion about [Edward] Snowden all that much, but I definitely feel like as a culture, it gave us information that generated a responsibility to protect ourselves as much as we can and also a responsibility to hold our government accountable to honoring our constitutional rights.

The [Edward] Snowden disclosures created this perception that people's privacy was being put at significant risk.

I think that has a lot of dangers, as does government surveillance, which is way too high.

What we're really debating is not security versus liberty, it's security versus surveillance. When we talk about electronic interception, the way that surveillance works is it preys on the weakness of protections that are being applied to all of our communications. The manner in which they're protected.

Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.

… the government should not be permitted to collect and store mass, undigested, non-public personal information.

Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.

Look at the reactions of liberal governments to the surveillance revelations during the last years. In the United States, we've got this big debate, but we've got official paralysis - because they're the ones who had their hand caught most deeply in the cookie jar.

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.

When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.

I think most Americans are against illegal surveillance of their emails and telephone calls by the government.

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.

stop spying on the lawful citizenry. Democracy and dossiers go ill together. It is all right for God but all wrong for the State to keep its eye on sparrows.

I'm glad the government has shut down. Think about it, for the first time in years it's safe to talk on the phone and send emails without anybody listening in.

We are not any safer through the bulk collection of all Americans' records.

I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people.

I'm very, very worried about the invasion of privacy rights that we're seeing not only from the N.S.A. and the government but from corporate America, as well. We're losing our privacy rights. It's a huge issue.