Could not open lock file

After finally successfully installing flash player (thanks Sam -question #89535) the following message was returned:
   The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libnss3-dev binutils-static libnspr4-dev
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

Autoremove then returned this message:

drissa@drissa-desktop:~$ apt-get autoremove
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
drissa@drissa-desktop:~$

Any suggestions?