Jeff Duncan Quotes

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms.

The privacy and dignity of our citizens are being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen – a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person's] life.

Unfettered discretion [in obtaining information could] alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.

It's perfectly reasonable for someone to be hesitant to share their personal information with the government. The Census Bureau shouldn't be forcing anyone to share the route they take their kids to school or any information other than how many people live in their home.

Just because technological advances have made it easier for the federal government to collect information doesn't mean that our privacy rights can or should be violated on the ground or in the air.

Ironically, one of the clearer threats to consumer privacy is the government's largely unchecked ability to collect your sensitive information without due process.

I don't think the government is out to get me or help someone else get me but it wouldn't surprise me if they were out to sell me something or help someone else sell me something. I mean, why else would the Census Bureau want to know my telephone number?

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights.

I might have lived in England for the last several years, but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

To defend our country we need to gather intelligence on the enemy, but when the intelligence lies to Congress, how are we to trust them? The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

That's not how national security works... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens!

As long as government is allowed to collect all Internet data, the perceived exigency will drive honest civil servants to reach more broadly and deeply into our networked lives.

There is growing use of government intrusion into your creative space…. The government is able to see more deeply into our intellectual lives.

Secrecy at the level of the individual suspect is different from keeping the very existence of massive surveillance programs secret.

I want to make it clear … that America is not interested in spying on ordinary citizens.

The evidence does not support the proposition that there is a significant measure of safety that is added as a result of collecting all these records on law abiding Americans.

Why is it O.K. for AT&T to know about our political, religious and sexual associations, but not the government?

[The FBI v. Apple Case] threatens a radical transformation of the relationship between the government and the governed.

Conservatives have deep distrust of government power, so I not only understand their privacy concerns, I share them.

Whenever the creation of a national, computerized database of gun owners is proposed, the advocates pushing it insist that people have nothing to fear because politicians will not abuse the enormous power inherent in such a database.

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

In a democracy, the citizens are supposed to have all the power, and the government is supposed to be the means by which the citizens exercise that power. But when you have a surveillance state, the state has all the power, and citizens have very little.

Our privacy, our rights as citizens - these are ideals that we Americans hold very dear.