Randy Pitchford Quotes

I was around computers from birth; we had one of the first Macs, which came out shortly before I was born, and my dad ran a company that wrote computer operating systems. I don't think I have any particular technical skills; I just got a really large head start.

I started with CB radio, ham radio, and eventually went into computers. And I was just fascinated with it. And back then, when I was in school, computer hacking was encouraged. It was an encouraged activity. In fact, I remember one of the projects my teacher gave me was writing a log-in simulator.

The National Security Agency: Where Intelligence Goes To Work

I worked for GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters, and is the equivalent of the NSA here in the U.S.

I am continuously amazed by innovations in security and surveillance technology as a member of the House committees on both Homeland Security and Intelligence.

Anne Arundel County has become the world's epicenter of military intelligence and defense-related information technology.

Improving our national intelligence capabilities should remain a top priority and a continual process.

I don't understand computers. I've been unable to construct a working mental model of how they do what they do. I can break software by looking at it. I can blow anything up. Without trying. It's sort of like being a dowser. And this extreme elaborate clumsiness on my part is actually something people will pay me for. It's quite wonderful.

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services.

The diverse threats we face are increasingly cyber-based. Much of America's most sensitive data is stored on computers. We are losing data, money, and ideas through cyber intrusions. This threatens innovation and, as citizens, we are also increasingly vulnerable to losing our personal information.

I look like a geeky hacker, but I don't know anything about computers.

The Cox Report documents a systematic, well-planned effort by the Chinese military at the highest levels to target and acquire technology for military modernization.

My dad could be beyond brilliant but totally introverted. If we're talking about computers, he's on. Otherwise, he's a total recluse - he stays in the house and won't leave, and I'm like that. If I'm not working, I'm locked up in my room.

If it were a fact, it wouldn't be called intelligence.

As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool.

But by providing the background picture - the universal situational awareness that we desire - by showing the anomalies, the Space-Based Radar will change the nature of how we do our analysis and our intelligence.

The NSA's business is 'information dominance,' the use of other people's secrets to shape events.

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate.

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

I believe that reforming our intelligence community is one of the most important things that we can do in order to ensure that our country is in fact safer, stronger and wiser.

I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.

I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.

If you don't treat [computer and Internet] security like a religious fanatic, you are going to be hurt like you can't imagine.