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'.
Calling 'Instagram' a photo-sharing app is like calling a newspaper a letter-sharing book, or a Mozart grand era symphony a series of notes. 'Instagram' is less about the medium and more about the network.
SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it's very inexpensive to send mail.
We went to Ladakh ... and we asked this woman, 'What was the benefit you had from solar electricity?' And she thought for a minute and said, 'It's the first time I can see my husband's face in winter.'
There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
What we can do should never by itself determine what we choose to do, yet this is the way technology tends to work.
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