Adam Cohen Quotes

The people of the FBI are sworn to protect both security and liberty. It isn't a question of conflict. We must care deeply about protecting liberty through due process of law, while also safeguarding the citizens we serve - in every investigation.

We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance on its citizens.

At least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone's phone conversation without a warrant issued by court. That's more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.

Where is the expectation of privacy in the commission of a crime?

Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused.

I thought that the AIVD was there to protect citizens like me.

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police.

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.

We have never really had absolute privacy with our records or our electronic communications - government agencies have always been able to gain access with appropriate court orders.

In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.

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.

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources.

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy.

Laws and regulations are supposed to restrict the kind of surveillance governments do. In fact, the U.S. government is quite restricted in what kind of surveillance they can do on U.S. citizens. The problem is that 96 percent of the planet is not U.S. citizens.

Americans don’t spy on Americans.

Americans don’t need a big government to read their e-mail and track what else they do

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

Many of our customers have serious concerns about government surveillance of the Internet. We share their concerns.

A democratic country has zero tolerance for all illegal monitoring operations.

It took 100 years, a Supreme Court Decision, and an Act of Congress, to stop the telephone companies from recording any American’s telephone calls and giving them to the police.

There must always be a balance between protecting privacy and security. In our country, one of the ways we have struck that balance is by requiring a court order before law enforcement can access certain communications of and data on suspects.

Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.

On the question of information security, he claims that, in a Trump Administration, the U.S. government will not spy on its own citizens. If true, this would represent a turn away from the strong language that he has used about identifying terrorists on our soil.

It is not possible to debate the balance between privacy and security, including the rights and wrongs of intrusive powers, without also understanding the threats.

I don't have a problem with stepped-up surveillance as long as we follow the rule of law.