Bruce Schneier Quotes - Page 2

Privacy is a fundamental human need.

Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.

Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy.

The question to ask when you look at security is not whether this makes us safer, but whether it's worth the trade-off.

The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it. It's when something is so common that its no longer news - car crashes, domestic violence - that we should worry.

Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.

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.

There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.

The more we expect technology to protect us from people in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this security.

Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.

It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.

Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.

The fundamental driver in computer security, in all of the computer industry, is economics. That requires a lot of re-education for us security geeks.

And honestly, if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken.

Think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value of information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.

I tell people: if it's in the news, don't worry about it, because by definition, news is something that almost never happens.

Corporate and government surveillance aren't separate; they're an alliance of interests.

Choosing providers is not a choice between surveillance/not; it's just choosing which feudal lord gets to spy on you.

The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want [...] Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help.

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example. Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of chaos.

Microsoft made a big deal about Windows NT getting a C2 security rating. They were much less forthcoming with the fact that this rating only applied if the computer was not attached to a network and had no network card, and had its floppy drive epoxied shut, and was running on a Compaq 386. Solaris's C2 rating was just as silly.

It doesn't matter how good the card is if the issuance process is flawed.

No one can duplicate the confidence that RSA offers after 20 years of cryptanalytic review.

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.