Law enforcement

"China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities."

"Like a black hole, NSA pulls in every signal that comes near, but no electron is ever allowed to escape."

"There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return."

"CCTV is seen either as a symbol of Orwellian dystopia or a technology that will lead to crime-free streets and civil behaviour. While arguments continue, there is very little solid data in the public domain about the costs, quantity and effectiveness of surveillance. However, using the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), it is possible to use local examples to understand the wider trend."

"The monitor gone. Ender tried to imagine the little device missing from the back of his neck. I'll roll over on my back in bed and it won't be pressing there, I won't feel it tingling and taking up the heat when I shower."

"Moira MacTaggert: Registration today, gas chambers tomorrow."

"The warning I articulated at the Geneva Forum in 2019 remains acutely relevant today: Tibet’s all‑encompassing surveillance regime offers a troubling preview of what could spread globally if democratic societies fail to place firm limits on the import and deployment of Chinese surveillance technologies.For Nepal and other countries within China’s expanding sphere of influence, this future is no longer hypothetical—it is already unfolding. The surveillance cameras monitoring Tibetan communities in Kathmandu do not merely endanger one vulnerable population; they signal a broader transnational threat, illustrating how technology can be weaponized to erode freedom, dignity, and sovereignty beyond national borders."

"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like."

"Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"

"Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place."

"The irony is that Barack Obama would not even be president if it were not for the courage of persecuted dissidents such as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, spied upon by their own government. But Obama understands where power lies. It does not lie with the citizen. It lies with Wall Street and our corporate boardrooms, which have carried out a slow motion coup d’état. And a system of mass surveillance is designed to keep these elites in these boardrooms powerful and the rest of us powerless."

"An omnipresent surveillance state ... makes democratic dissent impossible. Any state that has the ability to inflict full spectrum dominance on its citizens is not a free state."

"The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked and those who watch and track them is the relationship between masters and slaves."

"We have Mr. Wright's allegation that a surveillance operation was mounted against Lord Wilson of Rievaulx when he was Prime Minister in the mid-1970s...Many criticisms can be made of Lord Wilson's stewardship—I have made some in the past and I have no doubt that I may make some more in future—but the view that he, with his too persistent record of maintaining Britain's imperial commitments across the world, with his over-loyal lieutenancy to Lyndon Johnson, with his fervent royalism, and with his light ideological luggage, was a likely candidate to be a Russian or Communist agent is one that can be entertained only by someone with a mind diseased by partisanship or unhinged by living for too long in an Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world in which falsehood becomes truth, fact becomes fiction and fantasy becomes reality. The result of the allegation has been substantially to fortify the view that I expressed in a letter to The Times 18 months ago, which is that MI5 should now be pulled totally out of its political surveillance role."

"Need I say the C.I.A. be Criminals In Action Cocaine crack unpacking, high surveillance tracking Prominant blacks and whites giving orders for mass slaughters but I want all my daughters to be like Maxine Waters When they flooded the streets with crack cocaine, I was like Noah now they lower cause the whole cold war is over Communism fell to the dollars you were grabbing All the assault and battering in the name of intelligence gathering?"

"If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic power...[T]he hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement afford no security. The companion whom you most trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, all are tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follie; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides — where fear officiates as accuser and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard ... Do not let us be told, Sir, that we excite a fervour against foreign aggression only to establish a tyranny at home; that...we are absurd enough to call ourselves ‘free and enlightened’ while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity and establish a code compared to which the ordeal is wise and the trial by battle is merciful and just."

"One of the most frightening aspects of this alleged technology is the possibility of mind control by “remote control,” that is, through such technology as microwaves and radio waves...it is difficult at this point to determine how much of this is genuine, and how much comes from false beliefs deliberately induced to make survivors feel powerless...If some of this remote control it is genuine, we may need to develop technological means to combat it. However, we should not be intimidated. Even if “voices” are induced in the head by remote control rather than through alters doing jobs, survivors can learn to disobey such voices just as they do those of alters. Competent and compassionate therapy for the dissociation can help survivors to heal. Meanwhile, there are numerous survivors whose mind control is of the kind that can be treated through psychotherapy."

"A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called."

"Data is the pollution problem of the information age, and protecting privacy is the environmental challenge."

"Study after study has shown that human behavior changes when we know we’re being watched. Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free."

"Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page. So, Facebook carries out surveillance over visitors to thousands of different Websites, even for people who are not Facebook users. I hope we will have something for free browsers to block Facebook 'like' buttons so that people won't be under surveillance. In any case, this is why I ask people not to put photographs of me on Facebook, because Facebook collects data about the names of people in photos. It might as well be working directly for Big Brother. Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user."

"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."

"For those who could not believe, or were excluded from the fold, Communism was grim and repressive. Surveillance was the order of the day. The regimes had spies who helped them control the population. To begin with, at least, a wrong word could get you into big trouble. As often happens, for instance in the United States during the McCarthy era, some people made use of reporting on others to settle private scores. But the Communist parties went further than sheer control. Whole social or ethnic groups were suspected of enemy activity and excluded from society. Class enemies, of course, included the former aristocracy or those who owned property, shops, or factories, but also teachers, writers, or people with foreign or minority background. In Stalin’s last years, Jews were singled out for persecution. The point was to force everyone to conform to Communist ideals, though as time went by, a mere passive conformity gradually became enough. In the Soviet Union, campaigns against enemies peaked as the Cold War hardened in the late 1940s, even if mass executions ended. The population in forced labor camps, under the GULag system, reached its highest number, about two and a half million people, in the early 1950s."

"A close watch must be kept on the children, and they must never be left alone anywhere, whether they are in ill or good health. This constant supervision should be exercised gently and with a certain trustfulness calculated to make them think that one loves them, and that it is only to enjoy their company that one is with them. This will make them love their supervision rather than fear it."

"Bad cops are the product of bad policy. And policy is ultimately made by politicians. A bad system loaded with bad incentives will unfailingly produce bad cops. The good ones will never enter the field in the first place, or they will become frustrated and leave police work, or they'll simply turn bad. At best, they'll have unrewarding, unfulfilling jobs."

"Cops are necessary. Not everybody appreciates their hustle, but they’re like whores—they've been around since the beginning of the so-called civilized world, and you can’t get along without them."

"The politician follows the line of least resistance; it is easy to fall asleep over the unhappiness of others and to count it for very little; it is easier to throw a hundred men, ninety-seven of whom are innocent, into prison, than to discover the three culprits who are hidden among them; it is easier to kill a man than to keep a close watch on him; all politics makes use of the police, which officially flaunts its radical contempt for the individual and which loves violence for its own sake. The thing that goes by the name of political necessity is in part the laziness and brutality of the police."

"Presentations of police are often over-dramatized and romanticized by fictional television crime dramas while the news media portray the police as heroic, professional crime fighters . In television crime dramas, the majority of crimes are solved and criminal suspects are successfully apprehended. Similarly, news accounts tend to exaggerate the proportion of offenses that result in arrest which projects an image that police are more effective than official statistics demonstrate. The favorable view of policing is partly a consequence of police’s public relations strategy. Reporting of proactive police activity creates an image of the police as effective and efficient investigators of crime). Accordingly, a positive police portrayal reinforces traditional approaches to law and order that involves increased police presence, harsher penalties and increasing police power."

"The public has a long-standing fascination with crime, law, and justice. Crime is a central feature in news, newsmagazines, documentaries, reality-based shows, and fictional drama. The experiences of police, lawyers, judges, private investigators, medical examiners, correctional workers, criminals, and victims are probed in a variety of television shows. Every year, television executives attempt to find crime and justice programs that capture viewers and enjoy high ratings. In particular, the police drama or procedural is a staple of television programming in the United States, and several shows have experienced critical acclaim, large viewing audiences, and longevity. Since 1950, there have been almost 300 police dramas that have appeared on network, cable, and syndicated television. This number does not include the large number of shows that focus on other elements of crime and justice, such as detective shows, shows based on lawyers, judges, correctional workers, and criminals."

"What is the Police? This we can best answer by a deduction of the conception of the police power of the state. The state, as such, has entered into a common compact with its citizens by which each party assumes certain duties and receives certain rights. We have shown the means of connection between the state and the citizens in all cases in which the citizen can and undoubtedly will prefer complaint. He who violates a police law must suffer all the disagreeable consequences which may result to him, and is, moreover, liable to a fine. The chief principle of a well-regulated police is this: That each citizen shall be at all times and places, when it may be necessary, recognised as this or that particular person. No one must remain unknown to the police."

"Why should a government secretly place a watch over its citizens? In order that they may not believe themselves watched. But why should they not believe themselves watched? That they may discover their thoughts respecting the government and its plans, and may thus become their own betrayers; or may betray whatever they know of other secret and illegal acts. The former is necessary only where government and citizens live in perpetual war with each other; where the citizens are unjustly oppressed, and seek to regain their freedom again by employing all the means and tricks of war: the latter is necessary only where the police are not watchful enough."

"The police, who administer the law which teaches only the path to a better life for society’s victors and submission to authority, lower their sabers and menace human actions, taking everyone who they fear might shake the pillars of power and bam, bind them up one and all."

"I'm convinced that it is the psychopathic personality that searches out a uniform. There's little doubt of what's going on in that man's head who will voluntarily don any uniform"

"If you ever saw a policeman with a club in his hand, I want to ask you, did you ever see that policeman club a millionaire? But it is "Get out of here, damn you, go on to jail, damn you," if it is a working man."

"Men were not created in order to obey laws. Laws are created to obey men. They are established by men and should serve men. The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society. There is no disagreements about this function of law in any circle-the disagreement arises from the question of which men laws are to serve. Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interest better. Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation."

"Fuck the police comin' straight from the underground A young nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brown And not the other color so police think They have the authority to kill a minority."

"Police exist in the life of every state."

"Hawaii once had a rat problem. The, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. Import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. In Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there were once rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem.... Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem."

"Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void - is, in fact, not a law."

"The inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves to circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and make them bring about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State."

"The police are often the least likely people to be able to solve problems, to think in nuanced ways about emotional pain and its projections, and as a result are not the people we need help from if we are interested in creating peace."

"Collecting data in and of itself is a good mechanism to hold police agencies accountable."

"The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman — who is only a mere superhero."

"Police Officers alone, and none else, can give evidence as regards the circumstances in which a person in their custody comes to receive injuries while in their custody. Bound by ties of a kind of brotherhood, they often prefer to remain silent in such situations and when they choose to speak, they put their own gloss upon facts and pervert the truth. The result is that persons, on whom atrocities are perpetrated by the police in the sanctum sanctorum of the police station, are left without any evidence to prove who the offenders are."

"With great power comes greater responsibility."

"This government does not try to hide anything. Adequate instructions have been given to prevent custodial deaths in future. Henceforth, I assure you that no custodial death will happen in Tamil Nadu."

"Countries can authenticate and confirm the issuing authority of the e-Passport. E-Passport forgery is close to zero because of the embedded chip that contains biometric data of the bearer."

"At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade, an investigation by USA TODAY Network found. Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women. They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses. Despite their role as public servants, the men and women who swear an oath to keep communities safe can generally avoid public scrutiny for their misdeeds. The records of their misconduct are filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments. Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed."

"Police misconduct takes on many forms, from unjustified violence, murder, torture, sexual assault, theft of evidence—usually cash or drugs—and extortion, to actively assisting or participating in organized crime. However, this article will focus on a narrow segment of the many-faceted police misconduct problem—misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions. This includes everything from withholding exculpatory evidence all the way to planting evidence and inventing fictitious crimes. The misconduct might be the result of laziness or have a more sinister intent. Either way, police officials rarely pay for their misdeeds. The same cannot be said about their victims, who often pay with years or even decades of their lives, or, sadly, with their very lives. Thus, the issue of wrongful convictions caused by police misconduct is literally a matter of life and death."

"Nearly 800 criminal cases involving 25 police officers suspected of corruption are set to be thrown out in Baltimore, according to the city’s chief prosecutor. The 25 officers include eight who were in the now-defunct Gun Trace Task Force, six of whom pleaded guilty to corruption charges and two who were convicted in February 2018, said Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Prosecutors said those officers used their authority to rob suspects of drugs and money."

"Police corruption is ubiquitous and is a serious problem for numerous reasons. One is that police officers are often armed and can therefore pose a physical threat to citizens in a way that most other state officials do not. Another is that citizens typically expect the police to uphold the law and be the “final port of call” in fighting crime, including that of other state officials: if law enforcement officers cannot be trusted, most citizens have nowhere else to turn when seeking justice... According to Transparency International’s 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, more people pay bribes to law enforcement officers globally than to any other public officials, rendering the police the most corrupt branch of the state in many countries."

"Police corruption assumes numerous forms, from relatively benign but irritating demands for bribes from motorists to improper procurement procedures and—most dangerously—collusion with organized crime gangs in the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and humans.... The “Dirty Harry problem,” is applied when police officers deliberately bend or break the law not for personal benefit but in the belief that this is ultimately for the good of society."

"Actions by police officers, including witness tampering, violent interrogations and falsifying evidence, account for the majority of the misconduct that lead to wrongful convictions, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Registry of Exonerations that focused on the role police and prosecutors play in false convictions in the U.S. Researchers studied 2,400 convictions of defendants who were later found innocent over a 30-year period and found that 35% of these cases involved some type of misconduct by police. More than half – 54% – involved misconduct by police or prosecutors. The findings by the National Registry of Exonerations, a project that collects data on wrongful convictions, come as protests over racial injustice and police brutality spread across many cities for several months following the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody.... Misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions rarely comes to light and doesn't usually lead to mass protests and a racial reckoning, although they involve the same reliance on secrecy and deception"

"In Britain, everything is policed except crime."