Criminal Justice Quote: Daniel Ellsberg on NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden

     I was overjoyed that finally an official with high access, good knowledge of the abusive system that he was revealing was ready to tell the truth at whatever cost to his own future safety, or his career, ready to give up his career, risk even prison to inform the American people.

     What he was looking at and what he told us about was the form of behavior, the practice of policy that's blatantly unconstitutional. I respect his judgment of having withheld most of what he knows, as an information specialist, on the grounds that its secrecy is legitimate and that the benefit to the American people of knowing it would be outweighed by possible dangers. What he has chosen on the other hand, to put out, again confirms very good judgment.

Daniel Ellsberg, 1971 Pentagon Papers Leaker, June 12, 2013

Criminal Justice Quote: NSA's Spying on Millions of U. S. Citizens

[The National Security Agency collecting of 3 billion phone calls a day] doesn't look like modest invasion of privacy....We're talking about trolling through a billion phone records a day. The Founding Fathers didn't want that. I think the American people are with me. Young people who use computers are with me.

Rand Paul, U. S. Senator, June 9, 2013

Criminal Justice Quote: Is NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden a Hero?

Edward Snowden [the NSA leaker] is a hero because he realized that our very humanity was being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe. Unlike those around him, who were too absorbed in their task to reflect on their actions and pause in the pursuit of digital omniscience, Snowden allowed himself to be "disturbed" by what he was doing. More in the midst of technology that most of us will ever be, Snowden disengaged for long enough to be human and to consider the impact of what he was helping build. He pressed pause. Thank heavens our intelligence agencies are staffed by people like Snowden, not robots. People who can still think....In the coming months, I expect a campaign to be waged against this young man that will make the one against Daniel Ellsberg [the "Pentagon Papers" leaker] look like child's play. His enemies have the full force of the machine--every e-mail he's written and every phone call he's made--to use against him. This won't be pretty....

Douglas Rushkoff, CNN columnist, June 10, 2013 

Criminal Justice Quote: Big Brother Government in America

I think [NSA's spying on the phone records of millions of Americans] is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I've heard. They have no right to phone records....It is illegal, it is unconstitutional, and it is deplorable. I didn't like it when they did it during the Bush administration, and I don't like it when they're doing it now. They have taken the Patriot Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken and abused it. You talk about fascism? You're getting damn close to it.

Bob Beckel, liberal pundit, on Fox News, June 7, 2013