Eric Johnson

“Any government is evil if it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny,” he warned the Russian scientists. “The danger of such deterioration is more acute in a country in which the government has authority not only over the armed forces but also over every channel of education and information as well as over the existence of every single citizen.”
― Walter Isaacson

“Keeping the fear stoked is big business. Those in the intelligence community know it’s the basis of their influence and power. And government contractors know it’s where the money for their contracts comes from. Writer”
― Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

“It made a sound,” Carl says. “Can you describe it?” “Ever put a harmonica in a blender?” “No.” “Then no, I can’t describe it,” he says.”
― Anonymous

“Ron Rivest, one of the inventors of RSA, thinks that restricting cryptography would be foolhardy: It is poor policy to clamp down indiscriminately on a technology just because some criminals might be able to use it to their advantage. For example, any U.S. citizen can freely buy a pair of gloves, even though a burglar might use them to ransack a house without leaving fingerprints. Cryptography is a data-protection technology, just as gloves are a hand-protection technology. Cryptography protects data from hackers, corporate spies, and con artists, whereas gloves protect hands from cuts, scrapes, heat, cold, and infection. The former can frustrate FBI wiretapping, and the latter can thwart FBI fingerprint analysis. Cryptography and gloves are both dirt-cheap and widely available. In fact, you can download good cryptographic software from the Internet for less than the price of a good pair of gloves.”
― Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography