It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
Interpretation
We must be cautious about adopting technologies that can be misused for oppressive purposes.
The quote warns that adopting certain technologies without careful consideration may lead to consequences where those technologies could enable authoritarian governance. Bruce Schneier emphasizes the importance of civic responsibility and foresight in the implementation of technologies that have the potential to infringe on civil liberties and privacy, urging society to think critically about the long-term implications of such advancements.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the ethical considerations of surveillance technology.
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.
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.
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.
You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
I am regularly asked what the average Internet user can do to ensure his security. My first answer is usually 'Nothing; you're screwed'.
Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you've put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.
We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.
Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology.
When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the public what to get, they say it in curves.
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
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