209 Quotes by Bruce Schneier

The world now knows that US telcos give the NSA access to the Internet backbone and that US cloud providers give it access to user accounts.

Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can’t break.

Privacy is a fundamental human need.

Already law enforcement agencies make use of predictive analytic tools to identify suspects and direct investigations. It’s a short step from there to the world of Big Brother and thoughtcrime.

The most common misconception about privacy is that it’s about having something to hide. “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide,” the saying goes, with the obvious implication that privacy only aids wrongdoers.

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

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

We saw this in late 2014 when Apple finally encrypted iPhone data; one after the other, law enforcement officials raised the specter of kidnappers and child predators. This is a common fearmongering assertion, but no one has pointed to any actual cases where this was an issue. Of the 3,576 major offenses for which warrants were granted for communications interception in 2013, exactly one involved kidnapping – and the victim wasn’t a child.

This is why regulation based on the concept of “personally identifying information” doesn’t work. PII is usually defined as a name, unique account number, and so on, and special rules apply to it. But PII is also about the amount of data; the more information someone has about you, even anonymous information, the easier it is for her to identify you.