200 Quotes by Glenn Greenwald

What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA’s own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.

I’d like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.

We shouldn’t have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance. Nor should the price of immunity be refraining from controversial or provocative dissent.

Abused in this way, law becomes a tool – both domestically and internationally – by which the powerful can coerce and control the powerless, rather than a system for ensuring that all are subjected to common rules. Nowhere.

Terrorism’: the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.

I don’t have a ‘side’ – I’m responsible for what I say and nothing else.

An elite class that is free to operate without limits – whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior – is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power.

The promise of the Internet has always been that it was gonna be this unprecedentedly potent instrument of liberation and democratization. It would let you explore things and meet people who you wouldn’t otherwise get to know, in completely free and unconstrained ways.

When someone who wields political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it’s incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course. Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.