73+ Bruce Schneier Quotes On Technology, Intelligence And Security

Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy expert, and writer. He is the author of several books on computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of the security firm Counterpane Internet Security. Schneier is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Bruce Schneier on leadership, technology, intelligence.

Top 10 Bruce Schneier Quotes

1. There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.
2. If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
3. Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.
4. More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.
5. People often represent the weakest link in the security chain and are chronically responsible for the failure of security systems.
6. If someone steals your password, you can change it. But if someone steals your thumbprint, you can't get a new thumb. The failure modes are very different.
7. I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'.
8. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
9. Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.
10. It is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics.

Bruce Schneier Short Quotes

• Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.
• There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
• You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.
• No one can duplicate the confidence that RSA offers after 20 years of cryptanalytic review.
• Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
• Corporate and government surveillance aren't separate; they're an alliance of interests.
• Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
• Don't make the mistake of thinking you're Facebook's customer, you're not - you're the product.
• Only amateurs attack machines; professionals target people.
• Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.

Bruce Schneier Quotes About Technology

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

The more we expect technology to protect us from people in the same way it protects us from nature, the more we will sacrifice the very values of our society in futile attempts to achieve this security. — Bruce Schneier

The more technological a society is, the greater the security gap is. — Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier Quotes About Security

The mantra of any good security engineer is: "Security is a not a product, but a process." It's more than designing strong cryptography into a system; it's designing the entire system such that all security measures, including cryptography, work together. — Bruce Schneier

Hardware is easy to protect: lock it in a room, chain it to a desk, or buy a spare. Information poses more of a problem. It can exist in more than one place; be transported halfway across the planet in seconds; and be stolen without your knowledge. — Bruce Schneier

The whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if it's easy to remember, it's something nonrandom like 'Susan.' And if it's random, like 'r7U2*Qnp,' then it's not easy to remember. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

The user's going to pick dancing pigs over security every time. — Bruce Schneier

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

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

If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security. — Bruce Schneier

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

Security is a process, not a product. — Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier Quotes About Internet

Surveillance is the business model of the Internet. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. — Bruce Schneier

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community. — Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Bruce Schneier

Surveillance of power is one of the most important ways to ensure that power does not abuse its status. But, of course, power does not like to be watched. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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

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. — Bruce Schneier

And honestly, if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

Microsoft made a big deal about Windows NT getting a C2 security rating. They were much less forthcoming with the fact that this rating only applied if the computer was not attached to a network and had no network card, and had its floppy drive epoxied shut, and was running on a Compaq 386. Solaris's C2 rating was just as silly. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security. — Bruce Schneier

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

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. — Bruce Schneier

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

I tell people: if it's in the news, don't worry about it, because by definition, news is something that almost never happens. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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

History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did. — Bruce Schneier

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

Choosing providers is not a choice between surveillance/not; it's just choosing which feudal lord gets to spy on you. — Bruce Schneier

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

It doesn't matter how good the card is if the issuance process is flawed. — Bruce Schneier

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

We [humans] are highly optimized for risk decisions that are endemic to living in small family groups in the East African highlands in 100,000 B.C. - New York 2010, not so much. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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

Privacy is a fundamental human need. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

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. — Bruce Schneier

Life Lessons by Bruce Schneier

1. Bruce Schneier has taught us to always be aware of the potential risks associated with technology and to take steps to protect ourselves from them.
2. He has also shown us the importance of understanding the complexities of technology and the need to be proactive in staying up to date with the latest developments.
3. Finally, Bruce Schneier has demonstrated the power of collaboration and the need to work together to solve complex problems.