Top 100 Glenn Greenwald Quotes
#1. Why wouldn't we consider doing to Islamic extremists what Glenn Greenwald does routinely to Republicans?
Stewart Baker
#2. Now I would almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, who's the journalist who seems to want to help him get to Ecuador.
Glenn Greenwald
#3. [H]aving the career of the beloved CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but that he is an ardent civil libertarian.
Glenn Greenwald
#4. The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the 'battlefield' is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited 'battlefield.'
Glenn Greenwald
#5. Whistleblowers are typically rendered incommunicado, either because they're in hiding, or advised by their lawyers to stay silent, or imprisoned. As a result, the public hears only about them, but never from them, which makes their demonization virtually inevitable.
Glenn Greenwald
#6. The idea that we should dismantle the core protections of our political system to erect a ubiquitous surveillance state for the sake of this risk is the height of irrationality. Yet exaggeration of the threat is repeated over and over.
Glenn Greenwald
#7. I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington.
Glenn Greenwald
#8. It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.
Glenn Greenwald
#9. It's just simply the fact that the NSA does not think anybody should be able to communicate anywhere on the Earth without them being able to invade it.
Glenn Greenwald
#10. In video games, one of the most helpless against injustice can even mighty.
Glenn Greenwald
#11. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.
Glenn Greenwald
#12. Certain documents, such as the FISA court order allowing collection of telephone records and Obama's presidential directive to prepare offensive cyber-operations, were among the US government's most closely held secrets. Deciphering the archive and the NSA's language
Glenn Greenwald
#13. 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
#14. The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.
Glenn Greenwald
#15. The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.
Glenn Greenwald
#16. [N]othing is less reliable than unchecked claims from political officials that their secret conduct is justified by National Security Threats and the desire to Keep Us Safe.
Glenn Greenwald
#17. Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name.
Glenn Greenwald
#18. I've always thought stability was suffocating and deadly. Like, when I read that the kids I went to law school with have stayed at the same firm, I feel like I'm reading an obituary. How much money do you need? Six million, seven million? Put that in the bank and do something else. Get out!
Glenn Greenwald
#19. You can offer the ability to citizens to choose from one of the two parties and elect their leaders as much as you want. But "democracy" is an illusion - a sham - if the most significant acts taken by those leaders are kept concealed from the citizenry.
Glenn Greenwald
#20. Rich, famous, insider journalists do not want to subvert the status quo that so lavishly rewards them. Like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system that vests them with their privileges and contemptuous of anyone who challenges that system.
Glenn Greenwald
#21. Significant and seemingly impossible social and political change happens more often than we think, and it happens more rapidly than we realize. Even the most momentous change is always possible if one finds the right way to make it happen.
Glenn Greenwald
#22. 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
#23. Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chat and social media messages and emails, what you're really talking about is the full extent of human communication.
Glenn Greenwald
#24. And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance.
Glenn Greenwald
#25. Many American pundits and foreign policy experts love to depict themselves as crusaders for human rights, but it almost always takes the form of condemning other governments, never their own.
Glenn Greenwald
#26. There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States, but around the world.
Glenn Greenwald
#27. 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
#28. It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.
Glenn Greenwald
#29. The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform.
Glenn Greenwald
#30. Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.
Glenn Greenwald
#31. 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
#32. being debated by the UN that involved imposing new sanctions on Iran. A similar surveillance document from August 2010 reveals that the United States spied on eight members of
Glenn Greenwald
#33. Those [American Jews] who favor the [Israeli] attack on Gaza are certainly guilty of such overwhelming emotional and cultural attachment to Israel and Israelis, that they long ago ceased viewing this conflict with any remnant of objectivity.
Glenn Greenwald
#34. adviser, repeatedly requested that the NSA spy on the internal discussions of key member states to learn their negotiation strategies. A May 2010 SSO report
Glenn Greenwald
#35. 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
#36. I'd like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.
Glenn Greenwald
#37. Bush violated FISA [ ... ] because he wanted to violate the law in order to establish the general 'principle' that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law.
Glenn Greenwald
#38. The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.
Glenn Greenwald
#39. The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.
Glenn Greenwald
#40. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.
Glenn Greenwald
#43. I don't have a 'side' - I'm responsible for what I say and nothing else.
Glenn Greenwald
#44. Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.
Glenn Greenwald
#45. 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.
Glenn Greenwald
#46. What made Guantanamo such a travesty - and what still makes it such - is that it is a system of indefinite detention whereby human beings are put in cages for years and years without ever being charged with a crime.
Glenn Greenwald
#47. Time magazine's Jay Carney and Richard Stengel are now in government while Obama aides David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are commentators on MSNBC.
Glenn Greenwald
#48. It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.
Glenn Greenwald
#49. Somehow, when the authoritarians on the Right search for icons of manly warrior power to venerate, they find only those who like to melodramatically play-act as such, but who ran away when it came time to actually perform.
Glenn Greenwald
#50. It's really encouraging and inspiring to be around a gathering of so many people ... who really are committed to that vision. (While addressing the American Socialist Party, 2011)
Glenn Greenwald
#51. When you cheer for the erosion of Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs rights, you're cheering for the erosion of your own.
Glenn Greenwald
#52. Mueller and Stewart estimate that expenditures on domestic homeland security (i.e., not counting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan) have increased by more than $1 trillion since 9/11,
Glenn Greenwald
#53. We should not be comfortable or content in a society where the only way to remain free of surveillance and repression is if we make ourselves as unthreatning, passive, and compliant as possible.
Glenn Greenwald
#54. For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.
Glenn Greenwald
#55. The email began: The security of people's communications is very important to me,
Glenn Greenwald
#56. The point of asylum is not to declare to the world what country you think is the pinnacle of civilization. The point of asylum is to find a country that's both willing and able to protect you from political persecution. In no way is asylum an endorsement of a country's politics, laws, or values.
Glenn Greenwald
#57. When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.
Glenn Greenwald
#58. 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
#59. My nature is that when I see abuses of power, I want to expose those abuses.
Glenn Greenwald
#60. Why is one view permissible and the other criminally barred-other than because the force of law is being used to control political discourse and one form of terrorism (violence in the Muslim world) is done by, rather than to, the west?
Glenn Greenwald
#61. Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.
Glenn Greenwald
#62. Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were 'militants' - even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed.
Glenn Greenwald
#63. The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.
Glenn Greenwald
#64. Objectivity means nothing more than reflecting the biases and serving the interests of entrenched Washington. Opinions are problematic only when they deviate from the acceptable range of Washington orthodoxy.
Glenn Greenwald
#65. 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
Glenn Greenwald
#66. Progress both in the United States and other nations was only ever achieved through the ability to challenge power and orthodoxies and to pioneer new ways of thinking and living.
Glenn Greenwald
#67. For a thirty-day period ending in February 2013, one unit of the NSA collected more than three billion pieces of communication data from US communication systems
Glenn Greenwald
#68. Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy.
Glenn Greenwald
#69. Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.
Glenn Greenwald
#70. I knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally.
Glenn Greenwald
#71. NSA has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet.
Glenn Greenwald
#72. The single most remarkable (and revealing) fact of the Obama presidency may very well be the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street executives for the massive fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.
Glenn Greenwald
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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.
Glenn Greenwald
#76. The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution.
Glenn Greenwald
#77. 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
#78. What I do know is that Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have been converted into the closest thing the West has to religious-like martyrs in the war against radical Islam, which means that anything short of pure reverence for them generates tribal rage and vilification.
Glenn Greenwald
#79. Mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power.
Glenn Greenwald
#80. It's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one's national 'credibility' depend upon periodically bombing other countries.
Glenn Greenwald
#81. Virtually every one of the most far-right neocon Bush officials - including Dick Cheney himself - has spent years now praising Obama for continuing their terrorism policies which Obama the Senator and Presidential Candidate once so harshly denounced.
Glenn Greenwald
#82. A lot of these people are Iraqis fighting for control of their own government. Maybe there's an argument to make that outside forces that go in and start bombing that country or invading that country are actually terrorists more so than the people in the country.
Glenn Greenwald
#83. 'Terrorism' itself is not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has been used that way ever since.
Glenn Greenwald
#84. 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.
Glenn Greenwald
#85. Similarly it is possible that the system itself is sick, even though the actors within the organization are behaving in accord with organizational etiquette and respecting the internal bonds of trust. That
Glenn Greenwald
#86. Was a full-throated harangue, a typical performance when American officials speak about a regime not aligned with the United States.
Glenn Greenwald
#87. society pays great attention to the motives of dissenters, but none to those who submit to our institutions, either by ensuring that their actions remain concealed or by using any other means. Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state. In
Glenn Greenwald
#88. American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.
Glenn Greenwald
#89. Government and businesses cannot function without enormous amounts of data, and many people have to have access to that data.
Glenn Greenwald
#90. Of all the views that are detached from reality, the most delusional is that Christians are persecuted in the U.S.
Glenn Greenwald
#91. Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography.
Glenn Greenwald
#92. The second covered the history of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, based on a top secret 2009 internal report from the NSA's inspector general; another detailed the BOUNDLESS INFORMANT program that I had read about on the plane;
Glenn Greenwald
#93. He's the President - it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.
Glenn Greenwald
#94. 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.
Glenn Greenwald
#95. There's a huge cost to freedom in letting people talk about how you print these plastic guns or letting them say these things about arming for tyranny. There's also a cost to letting the government say these ideas can't be expressed, this is treason. It's difficult.
Glenn Greenwald
#96. The War on Terror has been and continues to be, above all, a war on the most basic liberties and political safeguards that we're all taught are what distinguishes the US and keeps it free.
Glenn Greenwald
#98. [I]f you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days.
Glenn Greenwald
#99. Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations
Glenn Greenwald
#100. Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen.
Glenn Greenwald
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