Surveillance State Quotes

“Study after study has show that human behavior changes when we know we’re being watched. Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively *are* less free.”
― Edward Snowden

“And when they spy on us let them discover us loving”
― Alice Walker, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart

“Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.”
― Edward Snowden

“When we've got these people who have practically limitless powers within a society, if they get a pass without so much as a slap on the wrist, what example does that set for the next group of officials that come into power? To push the lines a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and we'll realize that we're no longer citizens - we're subjects.”
― Edward Snowden

“To turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.”
― Keith Lowell Jensen

“And this is not just the United States’ problem, it is a global problem. One of the primary arguments used by apologists for this surveillance state that has developed across the United States and in every country worldwide is a trust of the government. This is critical — even if you trust the U.S. government and their laws[...] think about the governments you fear the most, whether it is China, Russia or North Korea, or Iran. These spying capabilities exist for everyone.

This is not just an American thing; this is happening in every country in every part of the world. We first need to move beyond the argumentation by policy officials of wishing for something that is technically impossible. The idea ‘Let's get rid of encryption’. It is out of their hands. The jurisdiction of Congress ends at its borders. Even if all strong encryption is banned in the United States because we don’t want Al Qaeda to have it, we can't stop a group from developing these tools in Yemen, or in Afghanistan, or any other region of the world and spreading the tools globally.”
― Edward Snowden, Edward Snowden: The Internet Is Broken

“Big Government' is a lot less like a 'Big Brother', and a lot more like a mother-in-law.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Either Western or Human
(Undoing Westwash Sonnet)

When the Brits invade a country,
It's called the march of civilization.
When refugees arrive in search of life,
It's dehumanized as illegal immigration.

When America recruits talents from abroad,
It is proudly boasted as headhunting.
When another nation does exactly the same,
It is hailed as espionage and IP stealing.

When America spies on everybody else,
It is sugarcoated as national security.
If someone so much as loses a weather balloon,
It is used to gaslight a nation into a frenzy.

To see the world as it is, first
we gotta take off our western glasses.
Look at the human world with human eyes,
only then you'll fathom justice and progress.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“It benefits the LAPD to have the news describe recommendations for lavish new police spending as the judgment of neutral experts. Imagine what it would look like if an "internal" LAPD report or a report by the company selling police spyware had been the one to recommend more money for more spying on protesters in the wake of the LAPD's widespread crimes. The news's portrayal of the commission report about the LAPD as "independent" is an example of how reporting on police violence becomes a stage in the cycle of police violence.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

“Conscience is the most sacred of all property in which our contemporary government of criminals aspires to plunder from our compatriots by the means of unconstitutional surveillance.”
― LibertasIntel

“Don't oppose mass surveillance for your own sake. Oppose it for the activists, lawyers, journalists and all of the other people our liberty relies on.”
― Thor Benson

“Americans don't care about privacy, and the people running the country couldn't be happier.”
― Thor Benson

“Law is the historical antithesis of order.”
― J.P. Redding, OFF GRID: How Long Can They Hide From The Surveillance State?

“You ride the waves of once-in-a-century floods that now hit us monthly and stare at the dark mirror version of yourself that people seem to recognize more than your innate humanity.”
― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

“We live in an age when private life is being destroyed. The police destroy it in Communist countries, journalists threaten it in democratic countries, and little by little the people themselves lose their taste for private life and their sense of it. Life when one can’t hide from the eyes of others — that is hell.”
― Milan Kundera

“The whole planet would become one big interconnected web of cameras. It was all too much to fathom, this writhing, seething mass of digitized human lives—this mocking, sneering leviathan.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“In a total surveillance state, complicity is much more likely than ignorance.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“When every move is under surveillance, the real revolution occurs in the mind, where the desire to reveal the concealed reality becomes unstoppable.”
― Y.K.Y. SADEK, Obedience is Happiness: The Promises Of Tomorrow

“A Malignant State by Stewart Stafford

When oozing eyes of paranoia,
And the septic ears of hearsay,
Vomit hysteria up as atrocity,
The mad dog jackal has its day.

A demented warden's open prison,
Each dwelling house, a divided cell,
Community focus now second best,
Our loved ones, cats in the wishing well.

For your "security," a police state, gifted,
Humiliation's fires rage by a dry water spout,
A lawfare circus for their spoiler alerts,
Truth's spectral vessel a flood of doubt.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Either Internet or Privacy
(Cybersecurity 101, Sonnet)

The purpose of a strong password
is not to keep your accounts safe,
but to keep your accounts moderately
secure against common scammers, however,

if you become a target of actual hackers,
or a person of interest to the government,
have no doubt, your internet
activities are already monitored.

Paranoia of cybersecurity only ruins sanity,
it does nothing to establish security.
No technology that's connected
to the internet is unhackable,
either you can have internet or privacy.

So, don't post family pictures online,
keep your passwords moderately complex,
refrain from consentless content,
cloud is the last place to be private.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“The purpose of a strong password is not to keep your accounts safe, but to keep your accounts moderately secure against common scammers, however, if you become a target of actual hackers, or a person of interest to the government, have no doubt, your internet activities are already monitored.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop