Glenn Greenwald > Quotes

“I don't have a 'side'—I'm responsible for what I say and nothing else.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“But the true measure of a society’s freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,” he said. “If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything—on terrorism, drugs, even poverty—has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be?”
― Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

“The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo Eric Schmidt’s view that privacy is for people who have something to hide. But none of them would willingly give me the passwords to their email accounts, or allow video cameras in their homes.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The lesson for me was clear: national security officials do not like the light. They act abusively and thuggishly only when they believe they are safe, in the dark. Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, we discovered, its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

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

“The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”
― Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

“Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.”
― Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

“Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“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.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“There’s nothing “grown-up” about wanting the State to punish people without evidence of guilt so that you can feel safe. It’s actually a deeply childish need at the heart of all authoritarianism - the desire for a big daddy figure to keep you safe from the Bad People even it means there are no legal constraints, due process, or transparency.

Children growing up learn that their Daddy is omnipotent and omniscient and exercises his unchecked power for benevolent ends - it’s a nice, safe feeling, and many continue to cling to it in adulthood, hoping the Security State will provide that. Many adjectives can and should be used to describe that need - “grown-up” definitely is not among them.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“We all instinctively understand that the private realm is where we can act, think, speak, write, experiment, and choose how to be, away from the judgmental eyes of others. Privacy is a core condition of being a free person.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“But the more significant factor is that one can easily remain free of even the most intense political oppression simply by placing one’s faith and trust in institutions of authority. People who get themselves to be satisfied with the behavior of their institutions of power, or who at least largely acquiesce to the Plegitimacy of prevailing authority, are almost never subjected to any oppression, even in the worst of tyrannies.

Why would they be? Oppression is designed to compel obedience and submission to authority. Those who voluntarily put themselves in that state – by believing that their institutions of authority are just and good and should be followed rather than subverted – render oppression redundant, unnecessary.

Of course people who think and behave this way encounter no oppression. That’s their reward for good, submissive behavior. As Rosa Luxemburg put this: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” They are left alone by institutions of power because they comport with the desired behavior of complacency and obedience without further compulsion.

But the fact that good, obedient citizens do not themselves perceive oppression does not mean that oppression does not exist. Whether a society is free is determined not by the treatment of its complacent, acquiescent citizens – such people are always unmolested by authority – but rather by the treatment of its dissidents and its marginalized minorities.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“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.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.”
― Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

“It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war.”
― Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency

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

“I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“Taken in its entirety, the Snowden archive led to an ultimately simple conclusion: the US government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide. Far from hyperbole, that is the literal, explicitly stated aim of the surveillance state: to collect, store, monitor, and analyze all electronic communication by all people around the globe. The agency is devoted to one overarching mission: to prevent the slightest piece of electronic communication from evading its systemic grasp.”
― Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

“Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.

That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.”
― Glenn Greenwald