Quote

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

Bruce Schneier

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Bruce Schneier
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: January 15
Computer Scientist
Cryptographer
Mathematician
Physicist
Writer
New York City
New York
Regularly
Successes
Frustrating
Largely
Failures
Rare
Terrorizing
Terrorism
Ineffectual
Effects
Magnify

More quotes by Bruce Schneier

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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.
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Don't make the mistake of thinking you're Facebook's customer, you're not - you're the product.
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There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
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It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws we need to protect ourselves with mathematics.
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I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing you're screwed'.
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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.
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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.
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More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.
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Privacy is a fundamental human need.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
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Buy American Doesn’t Sell Well Anymore Because It Means Give A Copy To The NSA
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Cryptography products may be declared illegal, but the information will never be
Bruce Schneier
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Choosing providers is not a choice between surveillance/not it's just choosing which feudal lord gets to spy on you.
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It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
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The question to ask when you look at security is not whether this makes us safer, but whether it's worth the trade-off.
Bruce Schneier
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It doesn't matter how good the card is if the issuance process is flawed.
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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.
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