Bram Cohen Quotes

People are just beginning to learn how much their own personal privacy is being invaded and that they’re losing control over their own information.

The Great Firewall of China and the unrestricted surveillance by the National Security Agency illustrate a tendency for the state to assert its interests at the expense of individuals.

I really believe that we don't have to make a trade-off between security and privacy. I think technology gives us the ability to have both.

I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines.

We have to examine very carefully any privacy-reducing technology.

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.

You can have Google or you can have privacy but you can’t have both.

Even a government as ostensibly open and committed to freedom of speech as our own — are [censors] more likely to operate in their own interests than in their citizens’. In the age of cyberspace, that is a scary prospect.

Online censorship, mass and targeted surveillance and data collection, digital attacks on civil society and repression resulting from online expression force individuals around the world to seek security to hold opinions without interference and seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds. Many seek to protect their security through encryption, the scrambling of data so only intended recipients may access it

Information technology is a formidable enabler of freedoms. For example, it lowers barriers to freedom of expression and allows people to get a better grasp of their lives. It should not be used to reduce the freedom of people.

In this day and age if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down. The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get.

We live in a moment in history in which our privacy may not be important.

You're gonna check my computer records? Is that important? I don't think the government needs to know how I feel about teen Asian sluts in order to fight terrorism.

Where are we going to reject that easy but flawed process of letting the intelligence services do whatever they want? It's inevitable that it will happen. I think it's going to be where Internet businesses go.

We now expect Google, Facebook, Twitter and other companies to police the Internet for dangerous and illegal material - violent, terrorist, criminal - and some democratic governments require them to do so. But what if they did decide to repress material for political reasons? How would we know?

The fact that Facebook presents facial recognition programmes as a desirable development, well, that in itself is a decisive step toward fascism, as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think that technology is going to allow for greater subjugation of people. I think it's gonna give them more freedom.

'Mr. Robot' has made me so much more aware of everything. I have to think about it.

To be sure, anonymity online has it uses and is very important. Governments hoover up people's telephone and e-mail records without oversight, and companies track astonishingly granular personal information.

If the Walkman had, by default, silently contacted your friends and told them what you were listening to, not only would no one have bought a Walkman in the first place, its designers would have been viewed with the utmost suspicion.

I do not want to give the state and the authorities the right to ban things on the Internet - no ifs.

I log on and there are so many cookies embedded in my computer - it's like they know what I need before I do.

Technology should be used for better purposes, for people's overall welfare and development of state and country, instead of misusing it to win elections.

Privacy and security are the ultimate shared responsibility, and everyone - including governments, companies, and citizens - have an important role to play.

The open source nature of the Internet is both a blessing and a curse, because just as much as we can watch what's happening around the world, we can also be watched.