Bruce Schneier Quotes

I care a lot about privacy. I also care an awful lot about public safety. There continues to be a huge collision between those two things we care about.

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

If we give up all our privacy rights, have we become any safer?

If we take away all our privacy rights, we become our own terrorists.

Privacy is paradise.

Certainly I support the Constitution, and I respect people's privacy, but I also think we need to err on the side of protecting us.

Liberty comes only after security.

Our need for public safety and our need for privacy are crashing into each other and we've got to sort that out.

Privacy is a fundamental human need.

I'm convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you're less safe when you give up your liberties.

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

Law-abiding citizens value privacy. Terrorists require invisibility. The two are not the same, and they should not be confused.

I particularly recognize that reasonable people can disagree as to what that proper balance or blend is between privacy and security and safety.

The right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the most valued by civilized men.

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

All persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy.

Security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can have both

It may be that by watching everywhere we go, by watching everything we do, by analyzing every word we say, by waiting and passing judgment over every association we make and every person we love, that we could uncover a terrorist plot, or we could discover more criminals. But is that the kind of society we want to live in?

How can we have our privacy? How can we have our independence now in these times with these cameras? Because I think privacy and our solitude is really important.

Benjamin Franklin once said, 'A people who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.' I think we can have both. We can keep our liberties. We can have our security.

I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.

You cannot barter security for freedom, or freedom for security.

Like all security, privacy is hard.

Freedom was the price of privacy.

In a democracy it is ultimately for us, the citizens, to judge where to place the balance between security and privacy, safety and liberty. It's our lives and liberties that are threatened, not only by terrorism but also by massive depredations of our privacy in the name of counter-terrorism. If those companies from which governments actually take most of our intimate details want to show that they are still on the side of the angels, they had better join this struggle for transparency too.