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'.
The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.
Most people in AI, particularly the younger ones, now believe that if you want a system that has a lot of knowledge in, like an amount of knowledge that would take millions of bits to quantify, the only way to get a good system with all that knowledge in it is to make it learn it. You are not going to be able to put it in by hand.
We predicted the concept of a telephone that isn't tied to a wall or a desk. We anticipated that everyone would have a cell phone. We joked that when you're born you would be assigned a cell phone and if you didn't answer you had died.
Any program is only as good as it is useful.
The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.
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