Glenn Greenwald famous quotes

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

#Emotional #Israel #Attachment

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

#Country #Believe #Government

But when Warren has spoken on national security, she has invariably spouted warmed-over, banal Democratic hawk tripe of the kind that she just recited about Israel and Gaza. During her Senate campaign, for instance, she issued wildly militaristic - and in some cases clearly false - statements about Iran and its nuclear program that would have been comfortable on the pages of The Weekly Standard.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Israel #Iran #Hawks

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

#Government #Way #Individual

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

#Thinking #Nsa #Doe

The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it's how it treats its dissidents.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Citizens #Tests #Treats

The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo [Google CEO] 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

#Home #Echoes #Views

It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Wall #Government #United States

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

#Religious #War #Mean

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

#Political #Surveillance #Used

When you cheer for the erosion of Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs rights, you're cheering for the erosion of your own.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Cheer #Rights #Erosion

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

#Government #Facts #Royalty

Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Mean #Terrorism #Justify

Only In America can a renowned and devoted terrorism supporter like Peter King be the arbiter of national security and treason.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Kings #America #Terrorism

There are few things more bizarre than watching people advocate that another country be bombed even while acknowledging that it will achieve no good outcomes other than safeguarding the 'credibility' of those doing the bombing. Relatedly, 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

#Country #People #Outcomes

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

#Views #Law #Political

A: Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that's not his goal. [His] objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing what they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their rights to privacy. [He] has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the US government if they were made public.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Numbers #Knowing #Rights

Nobody has the right to shield any idea as so sacred it can’t be challenged. ... Almost all human progress is driven by people who stood up and said ‘I disagree’ with this idea that society at the time considered to be the most precious.’
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Ideas #People #Progress

Snowden has enough [sic] information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Government #Doe #Knees

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Political #Culture

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

#Government #Goal #United States

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

#War #Drug #Use

A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Fearful #Citizenry

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

#Country #Empires #Imagine

The bottom layer of the right-wing noise machine.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Wings #Machines #Layers

A key purpose of journalism is to provide an adversarial check on those who wield the greatest power by shining a light on what they do in the dark, and informing the public about those acts.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Dark #Keys #Light

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

#Opportunity #Government #Definitions

To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Mean #Roots #Surveillance

I personally think honestly disclosing rather than hiding ones subjective values makes for more honest and trustworthy journalism. But no journalism - from the most stylistically objective to the most brazenly opinionated - has any real value unless it is grounded in facts, evidence, and verifiable data.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Real #Thinking #Data

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.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Law #Class #Limits

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

#Wall #May #Facts

All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Worry #Support #Challenges

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

#Independence #Sides #Argument

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

#Self #Closing #Expertise

The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#America #President #Moral

Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, . . . its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Real #Political #Abuse

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

#Government #President #Nouns

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

#Thinking #Roles #Care

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

#Yelling #Definitions #Lovers

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

#Mean #Facts #Process

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

#Speech #Reason #Assault

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

#Powerful #Law #Rights

It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Guarding #Common #Gates

He's the President—it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Responsibility #Thinking #President

When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Mean #Challenges #Orthodoxy

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

#Waiting #Criticism #Drones

Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Thinking #Government #Ideas

I'd like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Vote #Claims

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Keys #Nsa #People

Fearlessness can be its own form of power.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Form #Fearlessness

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

#Country #War #President

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

#Sex #Political #Energy

It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Believe #Nsa #People

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.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Thinking #Nsa #Surveillance

What we revealed is that this spying system is devoted not to terrorists, but is directed to innocent people around the world. None of this has anything to do with terrorism. Is Angela Merkel a terrorist?
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Nsa #People #World

You can't have a pristine house with ten dogs, and I'd rather have the ten dogs.
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Dog #House

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

#Surveillance #Way #Should

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations
-- Glenn Greenwald

#Nsa #Whistleblowers #Surveillance