Bruce Schneier Quotes - Page 3

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.

Terrorism is a crime against the mind. We win by refusing fear.

Something that looks like a protocol but does not accomplish a task is not a protocol—it’s a waste of time.

It's frustrating; terrorism is rare and largely ineffectual, yet we regularly magnify the effects of both their successes and failures by terrorizing ourselves.

Buy American Doesn’t Sell Well Anymore Because It Means Give A Copy To The NSA

When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes. It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault.

There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.

But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don't have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and - regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue - the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population.

Given the credible estimate that we've spent $1 trillion on anti-terrorism security

We no longer know whom to trust. This is the greatest damage the NSA has done to the Internet, and will be the hardest to fix.

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.

It is sort of interesting that in our society this days we are very quick to apply the term 'war' to places where thare are no actual wars, and loath to apply the term 'war' when we are actually fighting wars.

We can't keep weapons out of prisons; we can't possibly expect to keep them out of airports.

Secret courts making secret rulings on secret laws, and companies flagrantly lying to consumers about the insecurity of their products and services, undermine the very foundations of our society.

People don't understand computers. Computers are magical boxes that do things. People believe what computers tell them.

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet.

If the FBI parks a van bristling with cameras outside your house, you are justified in closing your blinds.

Microsoft knows that reliable software is not cost effective. According to studies, 90% to 95% of all bugs are harmless. They're never discovered by users, and they don't affect performance. It's much cheaper to release buggy software and fix the 5% to 10% of bugs people find and complain about.

ID can be hijacked, and cards can be faked. All of the 9/11 terrorists had fake IDs, yet they still got on the planes. If the British national ID card can't be faked, it will be the first on the planet.

Why is it that we all - myself included - believe these stories? Why are we so quick to assume that the TSA is a bunch of jack-booted thugs, officious and arbitrary and drunk with power? It's because everything seems so arbitrary, because there's no accountability or transparency in the DHS.

Cryptography products may be declared illegal, but the information will never be

When a big company lays you off, they often give you a year's salary to 'go pursue a dream.' If you're stupid, you panic and get another job. If you're smart, you take the money and use the time to figure out what you want to do next.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

A colleague once told me that the world was full of bad security systems designed by people who read Applied Cryptography

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.