209 Quotes by Bruce Schneier

Buzzfeed is an entertainment website that collects an enormous amount of information about its users. Much of the data comes from traditional Internet tracking, but Buzzfeed also has a lot of fun quizzes, some of which ask very personal questions. One of them – “How Privileged Are You?” – asks about financial details, job stability, recreational activities, and mental health. Over two million people have taken that quiz, not realizing that Buzzfeed saves data from its quizzes.

The UK company Cobham sells a system that allows someone to send a “blind” call to a phone – one that doesn’t ring, and isn’t detectable. The blind call forces the phone to transmit on a certain frequency, allowing the sender to track that phone to within one meter.

By 2010, we as a species were creating more data per day than we did from the beginning of time until 2003. By 2015, 76 exabytes of data will travel across the Internet every year.

For example, we know that the US government convinced Skype – through bribery, coercion, threat, or legal compulsion – to make changes in how the program operates, to facilitate eavesdropping.

Those of us who fought the crypto wars, as we call them, thought we had won them in the 1990s. What the Snowden documents have shown us is that instead of dropping the notion of getting backdoor government access, the NSA and FBI just kept doing it in secret.

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.

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 are social animals, and there’s nothing more powerful or rewarding than communicating with other people. Digital means have become the easiest and quickest way to communicate.

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