Great Throughts Treasury

"Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four."

"When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense. But unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible."

"And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I mean, the computer industry promises nothing. Did you ever read a shrink-wrapped license agreement? You should read one. It basically says, if this product deliberately kills your children, and we knew it would, and we decided not to tell you because it might harm sales, we're not liable. I mean, it says stuff like that. They're absurd documents. You have no rights."

"If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology."

"I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'."

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

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

"More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk."

"Not being angels is expensive"

"Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people."

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

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

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

"The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics."

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

"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."

"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."

"There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files."

"The user's going to pick dancing pigs over security every time."

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

"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."

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

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

"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 [in Internet Explorer] with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault."

"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."