70 Surveillance Quotes to Help You Understand Its Importance

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Famous Surveillance Quotes

Total surveillance is increasingly the general condition of society as a whole. — Michel Foucault

Our society is not one of spectacle but of surveillance. — Michel Foucault

The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded. — Vance Packard

Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government. — William O. Douglas

Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine. — Richard Stallman

paranoia is just a heightened sense of awareness — John Lennon

The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape. — Andrew Vachss

Who watches the watchmen? — Juvenal

When you grow suspicious of a person and begin a system of espionage upon him, your punishment will be that you will find your suspicions true. — Elbert Hubbard

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe. — Agnes Smedley

Big Government is erecting a panopticon state - one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store. — Mark Steyn

Let the eye of vigilance never be closed. — Thomas Jefferson

It is always good to be careful or vigilant. — Didier Deschamps

Social control is best managed through fear. — Michael Crichton

Short Surveillance Quotes

  • When they say accountability, they mean surveillance and standardization. — Marc Lamont Hill
  • If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. — George Orwell
  • Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple. — Bruce Schneier
  • The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything. — Eric Schmidt
  • Surveillance is the business model of the Internet. — Bruce Schneier
  • Nobody is listening to your telephone calls. — Barack Obama
  • Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation. — Marc Maron
  • Everyone, especially minorities of race and ethnicity, now live under a surveillance panoptican. — Henry Giroux
  • Corporate and government surveillance aren't separate; they're an alliance of interests. — Bruce Schneier
  • There was a possibility I could have been under surveillance. — Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

People Writing About Surveillance

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier
quotes on leadership, technology and intelligence

73 744
Read quotes by Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault
quotes on power, knowledge and education

169 3761
Read quotes by Vance Packard

Vance Packard

10 93
Read quotes by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski
quotes on education, democracy and immigration

134 1277
Read quotes by William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas
quotes on slavery, education and leadership

131 843
Read quotes by Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman
quotes on ai, technology and human rights

92 723

More Surveillance Quotes

The passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient — Aron Nimzowitsch

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

Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. — Chris Hedges

Privacy is an age of universal email collection and spying, with millions of CCTV cameras and warrantless spying pervasive; privacy has become virtually nonexistent and, therefore, extremely scarce and desirable. Bitcoin can be a completely anonymous transaction that maintains the user's privacy beyond the reach of any authority. — Max Keiser

Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. — Edward Snowden

One of the few things the Air Force did admit to me existed out there presently without admitting that it was Area 51 is this drone called the 'Beast of Kandahar' which does not fire missiles, unlike the Predator and the Reaper, but just conducts surveillance. — Annie Jacobsen

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

At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone, there was a constant surveillance by UFOs. — Scott Carpenter

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

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building. — Edward Snowden

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

If we had failed to pursue the facts as far as they led, we would have denied the public any knowledge of an unprecedented scheme of political surveillance and sabotage. — Katharine Graham

In recognising the global problem posed by osteoporosis, WHO sees the need for a global strategy for prevention and control of osteoporosis, focusing on three major functions: prevention, management and surveillance. — Gro Harlem Brundtland

I see battlefields that are under 24-hour real or near-real time surveillance of all types. I see battlefields on which we can destroy anything we can locate through instant communications and almost instantaneous application of highly lethal firepower. — William Westmoreland

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity. — Jeffrey Rosen

We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction — Maria Montessori

For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA. — Ron Wyden

Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning. — John Taylor Gatto

Surveillance of power is one of the most important ways to ensure that power does not abuse its status. But, of course, power does not like to be watched. — Bruce Schneier

Republicans don't want to shrink government. They want more and more military, more and more surveillance. They'd like to have the government banning gay marriage and so forth. — John Zerzan

The surveillance state has run amok. Technology that's enabled us to send selfies 24/7 - not that valuable - has also enabled us to be spied upon us 24/7. — Alexis Ohanian

If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide from the giant surveillance apparatus the government's been hiding. — Stephen Colbert

Taking privacy cues from the federal government is - to say the least - ironic, considering today's Orwellian level of surveillance. At virtually any given time outside of one's own home, an American citizen can reasonably assume his movements and actions are being monitored by something, by somebody, somewhere. — Bob Barr

We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies. — Gaston Bachelard

The people who, in order to enjoy the liberty which suites them, resort to the representative system, must exercise an active and constant surveillance over their representatives, and reserve for themselves...the right to discard them if they betray their trust, and to revoke the powers which them might have abused. — Benjamin Constant

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. — Cornel West

Police in Washington D.C. are now using cameras to catch drivers who go through red lights. Many congressmen this week opposed the use of the red light cameras incorrectly assuming they were being used for surveillance at local brothels. — Dennis Miller

I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere. — Bruce Sterling

Those who are experts in the fields of surveillance, privacy, and technology say that there need to be two tracks: a policy track and a technology track. The technology track is encryption. It works and if you want privacy, then you should use it. — Laura Poitras

The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. — Michael Hastings

We have put over £2bn in the last three years into counter-terrorism and we are developing the electronic border surveillance and identity cards — David Blunkett

Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze. — Garrison Keillor

In Conclusion

Each quote is a snapshot of a world where surveillance is integral. Reading The Handmaid's Tale surveillance or The Giver surveillance quotes, we comprehend the pivotal role of observation in maintaining order and ensuring safety. Meanwhile, quotes about Hunger Games surveillance or V for Vendetta surveillance spark thoughts on the power dynamics at play. Whether it's Hamlet surveillance, Government surveillance, Brave New World surveillance, or Technology and surveillance, each quote offers a unique perspective, fueling intellectual curiosity and fostering critical thinking. By embracing these surveillance quotes, we equip ourselves with knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world we live in, thus empowering ourselves to make informed decisions and form well-rounded opinions. So, let's dive into the world of surveillance quotes, a world where wisdom and vigilance intertwine!

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