Security Trade-off Quotes

If any county achieves absolute security, then all the rest of the countries around them have absolute insecurity.

We have sold our birthright of freedom and justice for a mess of national security.

[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.

I think mass surveillance is a bad idea because a surveillance society is one in which people understand that they are constantly monitored.

Security without freedom means slavery.

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.

The house wife is an unpaid employee in her husband's house in return for the security of being a permanent employee.

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.

What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwealth? Is this the wealth we seek to have in common - optimal security at the cost of maximal surveillance?

When you have war, whether it's a war against drugs, war against terrorism, war overseas, the mentality of the people change and they're more willing to sacrifice their liberties in order to be safe and secure.

The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism.

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison.

There is an unarguable downside to unbreakable encryption.

Some people may get in to the building without the proper passes and things, but I think that's the price you pay for being an open place for people to come.

Some in Washington say that you have to trade your liberty for security.

Because I don't believe that it's really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn't be willing to help uphold the security regime.

The fact that other countries spy on their own people or spy on each other does not address the fact that the US is engaged in massive, bulk collection to the tune of 70.3 million telecommunications a month in France of perfectly innocent people. That has nothing to do with protecting the United States, and has nothing to do with really gathering any kind of meaningful intelligence on France. It is an overreach ... and I think the other countries are justifiably outraged .... As one of our founders said: Those who choose between liberty and security deserve neither.

If the concern is security, there needs to be evidence-backed policies to increase security and safety, while maintaining our liberties and freedoms. Policies that clamp down on freedoms and don't increase security empirically need to be outright rejected.

One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't.

You don't know how much you appreciate your privacy until you don't have it.

Even if security from the cradle to the grave could eliminate [all] the risks of life, it would [still] be a dead hand on the creative spirit of the American people.

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.

Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary.

Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a "decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention.

While we should not hesitate to deploy encryption to protect ourselves from cybercriminals, this should not be done in a way that eviscerates society's ability to defend itself against other types of criminal threats. In other words, making our virtual world more secure should not come at the expense of making us more vulnerable in the real world.