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EFF Quotes Collection 6.3 ========================= Updated: Apr. 1, 1995 A collection of the wittiest and stupidest, most sublime and most inane comments ever said or written about cryptography, civil liberties, networking, government, privacy, and more. This file is updated frequently. The latest version is archived at: http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/quotes.eff ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/quotes.eff gopher.eff.org, 1/EFF, quotes.eff For more information on the Electronic Fronter Foundation, encryption & privacy, legislative censorship threats and related civil liberties issues, contact EFF via the Internet, phone, fax, or US Mail. The Electronic Frontier Foundation ---------------------------------- 1667 K St. NW, Suite 801 Washington DC 20006-1605 USA +1 202 861 7700 (voice) +1 202 861 1258 (fax) +1 202 861 1223 (BBS - 16.8k ZyXEL) +1 202 861 1224 (BBS - 14.4k V.32bis) Internet: ask@eff.org Internet fax gate: remote-printer.EFF@8.5.2.1.1.6.8.2.0.2.1.tpc.int _____________________________________________________________________________ "I want the ability to monitor high-tech communications among far-flung terrorists. I want to be able to have our people learn their plans before they strike. That's the key." - US President Bill Clinton, radio address, Saturday, May 20, 1995 "No! Thank God!" - New Zealand (Howick) Member of Parliament Trevor Rogers in response to the question, "Does New Zealand have anything akin to the [US] First Amendment?" asked by Kim Scheinberg in a recent interview. "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) "The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a helluva lot better that what the government's using these days." - anonymous, quoted in _GovAccess_ #119, May 18, 1995 "We have to get over this idea that the Net is an ogre that has to be defended against." - Bob Gibbs, telecom computer crime expert at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. _U.S._News_and_World_Report, week of May 22, 1995. "The Internet is simply a means of communication. Efforts to stop information by enjoining it are doomed to failure in a free society." - Prof. Frank Tuerkheimer, University of Wisconsin at Madison. _U.S._News_and_World_Report_, week of May 22, 1995. "If [museums, galleries and concert halls] were closed I should feel an infinitely poorer man, as though my income of possible pleasures had been cut down. I love [them], indeed, as noble reserves of pleasure on which I can draw at need. I can bear not visiting them, but I could not bear so easily not having them to visit." - Robert Lynd, from "On Never Going to the British Museum" _The_Portable_Irish_Reader_, 1946. A sentiment many Internauts might understand in light of today's efforts at net.censorship. "Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us." - P.J. O'Rourke, _Parliament of Whores_ "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." - Salman Rushdie (whose criticism of Islam inspired Muslim leaders to put a price on his head and condemn him to death.) "It is no solution to define words as violence or prejudice as oppression, and then by cracking down on words or thoughts pretend that we are doing something about violence and oppression. No doubt it is easier to pass a speech code or hate-crimes law and proclaim the streets safer than actually to make the streets safer, but the one must never be confused with the other...Indeed, equating "verbal violence" with physical violence is a treacherous, mischievous business." - Jonathon Rauch, in an essay in _Harper's_Magazine_, May 1995 "I think there are certainly going to be lots of debates about the Internet. My hunch is that the First Amendment rights are going to prevail, and that in fact this is an astonishingly free country and pretty much intends to remain that way, and the Internet will just be one more expression of our freedom... I think [with encryption] you have a different set of questions. I think clearly no American wants terrorists to be able to have a level of secrecy which enables them to organize ways of killing people, on the other hand people do want the right to confidentiality. I think that is a very...that is going to take some time to explore." - Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich in response to questions about free speech and crypto by Jeff Ubois at the opening ceremony for the Smithsonian institution WWW site, May 1995. "Fertilizer played a greater role in this case than computers." - EFF's Mike Godwin on the Oklahoma City bombing and allegations that the Internet may have been used by militias in planning the bombing; as quoted in _Entertainment_Weekly_, week of May 7, 1995. The bomb used was made from fertilizer and fuel oil. "The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no." - _Cuckoo's_Egg_ author and astronomer Cliff Stoll, in his new book _Silicon_Snake_Oil_, 1995. "I've said many times that I have what I call the Charney Theorem, stating that there is always a percentage of the population up to no good. Right now if you look at the people in our society who are up to no good, only a small percentage are computer-literate. If you fast-forward 30 years, they'll all be computer-literate." - U.S. Justice Dept. chief computer crime investigator Scott Charney, _Investor's_Business_Daily_, Apr. 18, 1995 "Most Americans still can't figure out how to program their VCRs. They are not going to be able to get onto the World Wide Web and locate, on some obscure bulletin board, the latest copies of Microsoft's computer programs." - U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Commissioner Bruce Lehman, on why he thinks currect intellectual property law will last well into the next century. From _Forbes_, Apr. 10, 1995, p. 51 "Digital technology is the universal solvent of intellectual property rights." - Tom Parmenter (from _Desperado_, issue 12). "...We have seen dog-tired Members [of Congress] marching lockstep ahead with their eyes fixed only on the end of the 100 Days [of the 1995 Republican 'Contract with America' reform efforts]. Many of the changes wrought by the House were passed without the benefit of a single hearing, or at best with a minimal legislative record. Is this what Jefferson and Madison had in mind?" - Dr. John Gibbons, Science Advisor to the President, from the keynote address of the Apr. 12, 1995 American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science's Policy Colloquium "The Department of Justice should resolutely bar monopolizing mergers in all markets, including telecommunications, but they are not in a position, as is the FCC, to promote new competition by selling the airwaves in auctions." - FCC Chair Reed Hundt, in an open letter to the Apr. 14, 1995 _Washington_Post_, opposing the abolition of the FCC "When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I am innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." - Myhr Lyle <myhr@mspost.ulinear.com>, email signature file, 1995. "...There's a battle...between the hunger for roots, stability, law and another element...which is anarchic. I hate to obey speed laws, I hate to park where it says you have to park. I hate to have to be someplace on time. And in fact I often don't do those things I know I should do, which of course fills me with uneasiness and guilt. Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay." - John Gardner "In English, 'con-' is the opposite of 'pro-', therefore Congress must be the opposite of progress." - RadarRider@aol.com [A reader notes that this is a paraphrase of a Mark Twain quote. Seeking verification. Another attributes it to the comedian Gallagher. Hmm.] "Official truths are often powerful illusions." - John Pilger, _Distant_Voices_, 1992 "The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind." - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty", 1859 "The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class." - Walter Lippman, _Manufacturing_Consent_, 1921 "A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually." - Abba Eban "Is this true or only clever?" - Augustine Birrell "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. - Leslie Lamport, DEC Systems Research Center, 1987 "'National Security': the root password to the Constitution. - Phil Karn. Karn has been battling the US State Department's cryptographic software export ITAR restrictions since 1993. "...don't go looking for alt.love. It doesn't exist." - Rob Pegoraro, _Washington_Post_ "That article and its poster have been canceled." - David B. O'Donnell, Sysadmin, America OnLine "Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience." - Clarence Day "Information is the currency of democracy." - Thomas Jefferson "The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind." - Mike Godwin, staff counsel, EFF "In case you haven't heard, the Internet is not a superhighway." - Bill Washburn, _Internet_World_, Feb. 1995 "The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions." - Anonymous ('Hacker's Law') "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does." - Margaret Mead [Also encountered as "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." We'd be interested in verification of one or the other. - mech@eff.org.] "For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency." - Eric Ambler "...[S]ome starry eyed individuals who access the Net think of Cyberspace as a community, with rules, regulations and codes of behaviour. Don't you believe it! There is no community. Perhaps there was some truth in that concept in the past, when the Internet was used exclusively by a small, homogeneous group of academics and corporate technical researchers. Today, with Internet access available to everyone, Iway travellers reflect every heterogeneous nuance of the world population. Along your journey, someone may try to tell you that in order to be a good Net "citizen", you must follow the rules of the Cyberspace community. Don't listen. The only laws and rules with which you should concern yourself are those passed by the country, state and city in which you live. The only ethics you should adopt as you pursue wealth on the Iway are those dictated by the religious faith you have chosen to follow and your own good conscience." - Laurence Canter & Martha Siegel ("the Green Card Lawyers"), from an early review copy of their book, _How_To_Make_a_Fortune_on_the_Information_ _Superhighway_, 1994. "Any time you throw information from the Internet at a student, you have to filter it." - Steve Shotwell, director of computer services for the Troy, Michigan school district. "Trying to control information in the network age is about as successful as pissing into the wind." - Keith Henson, in an article on the AABBS prosecution, _Computer_underground_Digest_, Jan. 21, 1995. "A means of control should exist whereby access operators and their organizations are held responsible for what is posted on the Internet," - Church of Scientology lawyer Helena Kobrin, 1995. "Knowledge itself is power." - Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." - Thomas Jefferson "I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. `Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting." - Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich on the de-funding of the Public Broadcasting System, as quoted by _Broadcasting_and_Cable_, Feb. 20, 1995, p. 8 "The Internet is a conduit of criminal activity." - James P. Lennane, president of software company DeScribe Inc., who in Oct. 1994 offered a $20,000 reward for the turning in of certain software pirates, whom Microsoft also offered a $10,000 bounty on. "First of all, you have to make the distinction between the Internet and some commercial service like AOL or Prodigy. If you spend that time and money building internets, you at the end of your labors will own tangible assets: hardware, software, paid-for network bandwidth, and human capital in the form of people who know how to run same. Spending those dimes on Prodigy means that in the end you will have rented someone else's assets and will have nothing concrete in the end except for receipts for bills paid." - Edward Vielmetti of MSEN "That will change over time the entire flow of information and the entire quality of knowledge in the country and it will change the way people will try to play games in the legislative process." - Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, on increasing public electronic access to Congressional Information (as reported by _BNA_Daily_Report_for_Executives_, Nov. 22, 1994) "John [Malone, of cable tv giant TCI] and I were just on a Networked Economy Conference panel together, and we were standing at the urinals talking about things, and Barry Diller comes in and stands between us. And Barry says, `C'mon, you seem like such good friends. Just split the difference.'" - Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, on the failed BA/TCI "NII" merger, reported in _Wired_, Feb. 1995, p. 110 "...[D]on't mistake any of this for altruism...Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better." - Larry Edison, CEO of Oracle, on the company's improved customer service; reported in _Investor's_Business_Daily_, Feb. 22, 1995, p. A2 "Networks are based on choice. When they get uncomfortable, it's easy to opt out of them. Communities teach tolerance, co-existence, and mutual respect...I fear that calling a network a community leads people to complacency and delusion, to accepting an inadequate substitute because they've never experienced the real thing and they don't know what they're missing." - Eric Utne, publisher of _Utne_Reader_, from _Utne_Reader_, Mar.-Apr. 1995, p. 3 "If I knew what you've made during the year, if I know what your withholding is, if I know what your spending pattern is, I should be able to generate for you a tax return. I am an excellent advocate of return-free filing. We know everything about you that we need to know. Your employer tells us everything about you that we need to know. Your activity records on your credit cards tell us everything about you that we need to know. Through interface with Social Security, with the DMV, with your banking institutions, we really have a lot of information ... We could literally file a return for you. This is the future we'd like to go to." - US Internal Revenue Service Document Processing System project manager, as reported by _Wired_, Dec. 1994, p. 174. "I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation." - Brad Templeton, Founder of ClariNet Communications Corp., _Internet_World_, Nov/Dec. 1994, p.64) "E-mail someday will unite us all in a shared state of epistolary bliss. E-mail is ethereal; it consumes no paper, no ink, and only a misting of fossil fuels. E-mail is nearly instantaneous. Best of all, e-mail combines the vacuity of phone talk with the potential permanence of letters. A fledgling still, e-mail promises to burgeon beyond anyone's calculation. Maybe the letter's golden age isn't dead after all; it may be yet to come." - an op-ed piece in the Nov. 9, 1994 _Wall_Street_Journal_ "Laws do not persuade just because they threaten." - Seneca, 65 CE "Nothing we do in this great capital can change the fact that factories or information can flash across the world, that people can move money around in the blink of an eye...Nothing can change the fact that technology can be adopted, once created, by people all across the world and then rapidly adapted in new and different ways by people who have a little different take on the way that technology works." - William Clinton, President of the United States, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 [Note how inconsistent this statement is with the Clinton Administration's policy efforts to stuff the encryption genie back in the bottle.] "The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously." - Hubert H. Humphrey "Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." - Gene Spafford, 1992, quoted in a Joel Snyder article in _Internet_World_, Nov/Dec 1994, p.94 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, _Historical_Review_of_Pennsylvania_, 1759. "Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them." - Lily Tomlin "Any vagabond babbler or unacknowledged genius, any enterprising tradesman, with his own money or with the money of others, may found a newspaper, even a great newspaper. He may attract a host of writers, ready to deliver judgment on any subject at a moment's notice; he may hire illiterate reporters to keep him supplied with rumors and scandals. His staff is then complete. From that day he sits in judgement on all the world, on ministers and administrators, on literature and art, on finance and industry." - K.P. Pobyedonostseff, _Reflections_of_a_Russian_Statesman_ (tr. Robert Long) "I'd rather have 10% of the world than 100% of New England." - President of Nynex, the New England local telephone monopoly, on telecom deregulation, as reported in _Business_Week_, Feb. 20, 1995, p. 92 "If you think the 13,000 guys at Microsoft who aren't millionaires yet are going to show some restraint, you're in for a surprise." - Andy Nicholson of Microsoft, in response to America Online CEO Steve Case's comment that Microsoft should show some restraint in the online service market. "If I have a market in the U.S., I have 200 to 250 million guys all speaking the same language, all paying in dollars, and all reading the same magazines. The natural hub of the industry is the United States. Whether the Japanese or the Europeans like to hear this or not, it's the truth." - Expatriate Belgian CEO of TechGnosis, a software company now based in the US. "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "There is a First Amendment right to speak in a encrypted way...The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand." - Eben Moglen, Columbia U. professor of law and legal history, in a _New_York_Times_ article by John Markoff, Sep. 21, 1993 "The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Cyberspace still exists at the pleasure of the real world." - Esther Dyson, EFF Boardmember, from Jan. 14. 1994 _Economist_ article "Grassroots can grow through concrete." - Jim DePoe <Aare@ph001193.uuhare6.rabbit.net>, as quoted in Jim Warren's _GovAccess_ e-newsletter. "Philosophical habits of mind do not come quicker through fiber optics. Clear thinking is not aided by better dot resolution. Understanding ourselves and feeling for others does not come with a software upgrade." - Linda Ray Pratt "When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell "[R]espondents [to an Internet survey] reported a more active civic life in cyberspace than is typically reported by respondents in the national election studies (NES) of Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan. Even though the technology is new, close to one-third had used e-mail to contact a public official. This compares to an estimated 28 percent of the NES who reported ever having written a letter to a public official during the 1960 and 70s...About 60 percent had been asked to petition or otherwise contact a public official about an issue or public policy." - Bonnie Fisher, Michael Margolis, David Resnick, "Democracy on the Internet" Survey Results, as presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York City, Sept. 1-4, 1994 "Knowledge of history is the precondition of political intelligence. Without history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been [or] what it core values are." - 'National Standards for United States History' as reprinted in _Time_, Nov. 7, 1994 "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater "When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping...Jay Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities in which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common sense, will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand, in detail, the whole system, and for very large systems you can't do this without a very large computer. Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands, but not to touch...Intervening is a way of causing trouble." - Lewis Thomas, from the essay "On Meddling", _The_Medusa_and_the_Snail_, Viking Pr., New York, 1979 "I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my freind, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." - E. M. Forster "One practice which I believe should be eliminated is that of the so-called 'paper front'. A client is advised to finance an 'organization' to promote or fight for its cause under the guise of an independent and spontaneous movement. This is a plain public deceit and fraud...Attempts to fool the public by making it believe an 'organization' existing only on paper is really a vociferous group favoring this or that cause have helped to cast a shadow upon the business of public relations counseling." - John W. Hill, _The_Making_of_a_Public_Relations_Man_ "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery!?" - Patrick Henry "The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human." - John Naisbitt & Patricia Aburdene, _Megatrends_2000_ "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", _TIME_, Mar. 14 1994 [note: these statistics have since been called into question. Even so, they are unlikely to be off by very MUCH...] "Many thanks to those of you who flamed the PC [Progressive Conservative party] pranksters. I know when I went online that I would have to deal with fake posts and related chaff. That's the price of being on the Net. I'm not about to delete my account. I still want to hear from people with *real* concerns and *real* suggestions". - Robert Rae, Premier of Ontario, Canada, in a post to the Usenet newsgroup ont.general, thanking supporters for verbally attacking PC party leader Mike Harris, who referred to an obviously forged message from a fake Bob Rae as an embarassing "security violation" and the forgers themselves. From a K.K. Campbell article in _eye_Weekly_. [If major figures of government are encouraging flaming, netiquette still has a long way to go...] "Time makes more converts than reason." - Thomas Paine "A Gallup poll reveals nearly 85% of Canadians worry the info-highway will be a threat to their privacy, but 54.9% are still willing to pay up to $15 monthly to be hooked into it. The info-highway received a 54% recognition rating, a figure described as "astounding" by Anderson Consulting, which sponsored the survey. 58.7% were interested in educational services, but only 21.3% in home shopping and 16.4% in calling up video games." - _Toronto_Globe_&_Mail_, "Snoopophobia Haunts Info-Highway" May 3, 1994 "Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop. Now, maybe that's wrong, maybe that's expensive, maybe we can't do it, but I'll tell you, any signal that we can send to the poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century, third-wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us.'" - Rep. Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives addressing the House Ways and Means Committee, Jan. 1995. [From _New_York_Times_, Jan. 5, 1995, excerpted in _Edupage_, Jan. 8, 1995.] "Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." - John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder, _Decrypting_the_Puzzle_Palace_ "Only through intelligent utilization of interactive multimedia technology can we make higher education simultaneously more productive and more efficient." - Bernard Gifford, software entrepreneur, quoted in _Educom_Review_, Nov./ Dec., 1994 "California legislators consider 10 to 15 letters and faxes to be a *strong* showing of support for a bill (in a state of 31-million population!)" - Jim Warren, _GovAccess_ Internet newsletter, 08/04/94 "It is almost impossible for anyone outside this damn beltway to really understand how the Congress works. If you aren't here, walking the halls of Congress, sitting at bars and attending parties where you get to knock back some brews with Hill staffers, you don't have a handle on the almost numbing amount of bullshit that goes on." - _CWD_ and _Comm_Daily_ journalist Brock Meeks, post to com-priv mailing list forum, 10/22/94 "'If you want me to tell you that our money buys us a vote on a particular bill at a particular time, I say: `Fuck You,` it doesn't,' according to a prominent lobbyist for one of the regional telephone companies. "'However, if you ask me, `Do we get better access because of a couple of $1,000 checks?` I'll guarantee you that two grand gets us in the door and gets our telephone calls returned before Joe Blow from the home office,' he said. 'And it sure as hell gets our calls returned before yours.'" - Brock Meeks, _CyberWire_Dispatch_, 2nd issue of 11/08/94 "There are at least four big barriers to the NII. One is outdated and compartmentalized regulations governing telecommunication, cable broadcasting, and information industries. Another is legal issues concerning copyright, intellectual property, and security. The third is standards and the interoperability of the various NII technologies. And the last is the development of new structures for commerce and business activities on the NII, including billing and payment for services rendered," - president of WilTel, Inc., as reported in _Telecommunications_, Nov. 1994, p. 29 "It's amazing where capitalism has boomed in the last couple of years. First the Eastern Bloc, and now the last bastion of socialism -- the Internet itself." - the Chairman of Delphi Internet Services Corp., as reported by _Information_Week_, 10/24/94 "E-mail is reincarnating the age of letter writing. We're keeping in touch the way the Victorians did, building a personal community connected by a constant stream of letters sharing news and gossip. E-mail is reviving the 'letter' as a forum for wit, style, and personality, as well as serving as an invaluable business tool." - Leslie Schroeder, Silicon Valley PR consultant to high-tech companies, from _Computer_underground_Digest interview by David Batterson, Oct. 1994 "Every advance in civilization has been denounced while it was still recent." - Bertrand Russell "[If] America's tv and movie producers are unwilling to clean up their act... when it comes to sex, bloodshed and violence in their programming... the government stands ready to step in." - Attorney-General Janet Reno at a 1993 Senate hearing on tv violence, as reported by a UPI radio report. [One is tempted to ask what the difference between 'bloodshed' and 'violence' is...] "Not all dinosaurs roll over and die. Some of 'em can run real fast and bite the hell out of you." - a Meridian Bancorp senior vice president on banking industry's plans to prevent Microsoft's online services from cutting into their industry. From _Business_Week_, 10/31/94. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke "If five years from now we [the FBI] solve the access problem, but what we're hearing is all encrypted, I'll probably, if I'm still here, be talking about that in a very different way: the objective is the same. The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeros. Whoever they are, whatever they are, I need them." - FBI Director Louis Freeh, clarifying statements that the FBI may seek legislation to ban strong encryption, in an Sept. 1994 Q&A session, from a WELL article by Steven Levy. "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." - Mitch Ratcliffe, _Technology Review_, April, 1992 "People need to buy and want to. The selling itself becomes the entertainment, the sought-after good... In the Internet world there won't be any other way to peddle. To be successful advertising itself will have to supply real value to the consumer." - Peter Huber, telecommunication attorney, quoted in _Forbes_, 12/19/94 "It's kind of the digital equivalent of a drive-by shooting." - a Texas A&M U. professor whose email account was abused by crackers who publicly posted racist remarks from the account, resulting in hatemail (including death threats) being sent to the professor. (Reported by _Atlanta_Journal_Constitution_, 10/19/94) "The hottest news in computing today is online communications, and there's no end in sight to the impact this will have on virtually every segment of the American public." - Practical Peripherals president Jack Murphy, from _Computer_underground_ _Digest_ interview by David Batterson, Oct. 1994. Batterson comments: "Irontically, Murphy's remarks were faxed to me, not e-mailed." "The net poses a fundamental threat not only to the authority of the government, but to all authority, because it permits people to organize, think, and influence one another without any institutional supervision whatsoever. The government is responding to this threat with the Clipper Chip...The obvious danger in supplying people with encryption is that encryption makes it easier to keep secrets, which makes it easier for people to commit crimes. With powerful encryption, the net would become an ideal place for criminals to organize conspiracies." - John Seabrook, "My First Flame", _New_Yorker_ 06/06/94 "It [the 'set-top box'] will allow us to control all the communication needs of a household with one device." - John Mallone, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) C.E.O. "Taxpayers have spent more than $200 billion in the last decade on computer systems that are antiquated, incompatible, and not doing the job." - Sen. William Cohen (R-Maine), on misappropriations for, and misuse of obsolete computer systems by government agencies (from _Information_ _Week_, 10/24/94). Ever get the feeling the govt. is differently clued? "I doubt that Congress would pass on the opportunity to make sure that our children were safe from terrorists." - FBI Director Louis Freeh using one of the main propaganda buggaboos of law enforcement attempts to weaken US privacy rights ("drug dealers", "child pornographers/molestors" and "organized crime" being the other 3 Horsemen of the Big Brother Apocalypse); from House testimony at a hearing on the FBI's Digital Telephony bill, 09/13/94. "The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power, and more sophisticated techniques used by establishment mass media to falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a priori ridiculous, or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest..." - William S. Burroughs, author (censored by the U.S. government; his comments apply now to the underground e-press as well) "What I believe we lack, as a nation, is something which describes our rights in an information age. I believe that the principles are all there, in our constitution. But I shudder to think what the courts will do to massacre these unless the legislature re-articulates these principles in terms more appropriate to contemporary technology." - Sean McLinden <sean@dsl.pitt.edu>, post to Com-Priv mailing list forum "To some, this is outrageous. To some, this is free speech in action." - Cliff Figallo (former EFF Online Coordinator, and former WELL Director) on the advent of anonymous remailers on the Internet "If the future navigation system [for interactive networked services on the NII] looks like something from Microsoft, it will never work." - the chairman of Walt Disney Television & Telecommunications, at Broadcas- ting & Cable magazine's Superhighway Superpanel (reported by B&C, 10/10/94) "Ask the American public if they want an FBI Wiretax and they'll say 'no.' If you ask them do they want a feature on their phone that helps the FBI find their missing child they'll say, 'Yes.'" - FBI Directory Louis Freeh, on Digital Telephony, US House (Subcmte. on Telecommunications & Finance) hearing on the Digital Telephony bill, 09/13/94). [Considering that the first question is fairly accurate, and the second is a wildly misleading attempt to convert real issues into emotionally charged buzzphrases and grossly inaccurate depictions of how this technology works, Freeh's estimation of the answers is probably correct.] "Describing the Internet as the Network of Networks is like calling the Space Shuttle, a thing that flies" - John Lester of Mass. General Hospital (from his email signature file). "In 1991, the latest year figures are available, most Americans, across all age groups, disapproved when asked the question: 'Everything considered, would you say that you approve or disapprove of wiretapping?' Some 67% of all 18-20 year olds gave the thumbs down, as did 68% of the Gen[eration]-X crowd...Boomers disapproved of wiretapping almost 3-to-1 while 67% of those 50 and over disapproved." - Brock Meeks, "Riding A Straw Horse", _CyberWire_Dispatch_, reporting on innacurate FBI figures presented at House Telecom. & Finance Subcmte. Hearing on Digital Telephony legislation, 09/13/94. "Finally, sometime in the near future--thanks to massive computerization of automobile traffic control--safety on the roads will match the airline safety of today, with relatively few car accidents and deaths per year. It's going to be very exciting..." - David Batterson, "The Online Future", _Computer_underground_Digest_, Oct. 24, 1994 "I believe in markets doing what they do well, which is to develop technology, and letting citizens do what they ideally do well, which is to set policy." - Esther Dyson, opening statements from NII Advisory Council session, 1994. "Frankly, the people probably most interested in having computer lists on disk are junk mail vendors and solicitors." - Karen Hughes, spokesperson for George Bush Jr. (R) Texas gubernatorial campaign, on why Bush refused to follow other candidates in providing online copies of files documenting campaign contributions and expenditures (as reported by _Houston_Chronicle_, 07/21/94). "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion" - Edmund Burke "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." - James Madison, 4th US President "We were extremely conscious of free speech rights. But they are not absolute." - John E. Palomino, Santa Rosa CA Regional Director, Dept. of Education Office for Civil Rights, on Branham, Arata & Humphrey v. Santa Rosa Junior College case. From "College Settles Harassment Charges Stemming from Computer Conferences", Tamar Lewin, _New_York_Times_, 09/22/94 "Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." - George Orwell, _1984_ "My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl!" [When cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy!", ROT-13 encrypted] - Brad Templeton of ClariNet "Wherever the Net arises, there arises also a rebel to resist human control...A network nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as often. It is...fertile ground for learning, adaptation, and evolution...The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen." - Kevin Kelly, _Out_of_Control_ "In order to keep up with the criminals and to protect our national security, the solution is clear: we need legislation to ensure that telephone companies and other carriers provide law enforcement with access to this new technology." - FBI Dir. Louis Freeh, 12/8/93, on hampering new telecom technology to make it easily wiretappable. [Full text of this Dec. 1993 DC Press Club speech available for anonymous ftp as wiretap.speech from ftp.eff.org in /pub/EFF/Privacy/Surveillance/Old/digtel93_freeh.speech] "[Digital Telephony] compared to the Clipper Chip, is relatively benign, but that's like saying cholera is better than the plague." - Carl Rudijerian "The Film, Video, and Publications Act also breached the Bill of Rights and it became law. Parliament is bigger than the Bill of Rights". - New Zealand (Howick) Member of Parliament Trevor Rogers, on Minister of Justice's comments that Rogers' anti-computer-communications bill is unconstitutional. "It's time for a reality check. These products are a little more difficult to develop than people thought." - a Bell Atlantic management official, on NII technology (quoted in _New_York_Times_, 09/09/94). "The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable." - U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission, 1977 "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." - Barry Goldwater "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." - Ken Olsen, then president of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 1977. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - Amendment IV, United States Constitution (Amazingly, the US House of Representatives voted this language down when it was inserted in a 1995 bill by a crafty legislator, to replace unconstitutional language proposed by another. Apparently, few in the House recognized this as the Fourth Amendment. One Representative even whined that gutted the whole bill.) "I used to feel like I was a flea on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I feel I might be a small yapping poodle on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex." - Phil Zimmerman, on releasing "Pretty Good Privacy" (PGP) "Information wants to be free." - Stewart Brand, EFF boardmember, founder of Whole Earth Catalog and the WELL. (Among others. No telling who really said this first.) "Information wants to be free. Believe it." - Bruce Sterling, author and EFF-Austin boardmember "But programmers and authors want to get paid." - source unknown "Recently, we have witnessed an alarming number of young people who, for a variety of sociological and psychological reasons, have become attached to their computers and are exploiting their potential in a criminal manner. Often, a progression of criminal activity occurs which involves telecommunications fraud (free long distance phone calls), unauthorized access to other computers (whether for profit, fascination, ego, or the intellectual challenge), credit card fraud (cash advances and unauthorized purchases of goods), and then move on to other destructive activities like computer viruses...Our experience shows that many computer hacker suspects are no longer misguided teenagers mischievously playing games with their computers in their bedrooms. Some are now high tech computer operators using computers to engage in unlawful conduct." - Garry M. Jenkins, Asst. Director, U. S. Secret Service "We empower eachother by sharing information...We can create here, together, a society in which everyone has a voice, and everybody's ideas are heard." - Sheila Lennon, "The Global Village is Finally Wired", _Providence_[RI]_Sunday_Journal_, 08/07/94 "Privacy in one's associations ... may in many circumstances be indispensable to freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs." - John M. Harlan, Supreme Court justice, 1958 "Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." - Ayn Rand, _The_Fountainhead_, 1943 "Earlier this month...America Online..shut several feminist discussion forums, saying it was concerned that the subject matter might be inappropriate for young girls who would see the world 'girl' in the forum's headline and 'go in there looking for information about their Barbies,' a spokeswoman said." - Peter H. Lewis, "Censors Become a Force on Cyberspace Frontier", _New_York_Times_, 06/07/94 "It seems to me the book has not just aesthetic values -- the charming little clothy box of the thing, the smell of the glue, even the print, which has its own beauty. But there's something about the sensation of ink on paper that is in some sense a thing, a phenomenon rather than an epiphenomenon. I can't break the association of electric trash with the computer screen. Words on the screen give the sense of being just another passing electronic wriggle." - John Updike. _Atlantic_Monthly_, 09/94 "While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling." - David Gelerntner, Yale U., _New_Republic_, 09/26/94 "Cryptography is an enormously powerful tool that needs to be controlled, just as we control bombs and rockets." - David A. Lytel, President's Office of Science and Technology Policy "Society has recognized over time that certain kinds of scientific inquiry can endanger society as a whole and has applied either directly, or through scientific/ethical constraints, restrictions on the kind and amount of research that can be done in those areas." - Adm. Bobby R. Inman (then CIA Dep. Dir.) in a February, 1982 article for _Aviation_Week_and_Space_Technology_ on why cryptographic research should be limited to government scientists. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that individuals have the right to protect their private communications by any method they choose - without government interference. "You know your country is dying when you have to make a distinction between what is moral and ethical, and what is legal." - John De Armond <jgd@dixie.com>, _Performance_Engineering_Magazine_, 1994 "This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down their noses at the people who came over ON THE SECOND BOAT!" - EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor, on Internet-user elitism v. BBS users "Within a cell site, LE officers ... use triangulation equipment to zero in on a particular caller['s physical location]...cellular tracking is extremely beneficial, it's an investigative tool of the future." - Michael Guidry, of the Guidry Group, Houston, TX, security consultants; from "Fugitive relied on and was undone by cellular phone", _LA_Times_, 06/19/94 "There is a very real and critical danger that unrestrained public discussion of cryptologic matters will seriously damage the ability of this government to conduct signals intelligence and the ability of this government to carry out its mission of protecting national security information from hostile exploitation." - Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (then Director of the NSA) in a public speech in March 1979. "It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead." - Thomas Jefferson "Inman seemed to regard real, virile encryption to be something rather like a Saturday Night Special. 'My answer,' he said, 'would be legislation which would make it a criminal offense to use encrypted communication to conceal criminal activity.' "Wouldn't that render all encrypted traffic automatically suspect? I asked. "'Well,' he said, 'you could have a registry of institutions which can legally use ciphers. If you get somebody using one who isn't registered, then you go after him.'" - from John Perry Barlow's "Decrypting the Puzzle Palace",1992 [available online as ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/decrypting_puzzle.palace]. "The more people use computers, the more they find ways to abuse things." - Rick Sigurdson, IRS investigator & chairman of Federal Computer Investigations Committee (from AP Wire story "Policing Cyberspace", by Ted Anthony) "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." - Harry S. Truman on clandestine government From "Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman," Merle Miller, 1974, ch. 23 "The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." - John Adams, "Notes for an Oration at Braintree", 1772 "Let us contemplate out forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." - Samuel Adams ("patriot, statesman, brewer"), speech, 1771 "Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse." - Rousseau, "The Social Contract," 1762 "There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses." - Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Bank Bill, 1832 "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson, 1820 "I still believe, in spite of the level of public inanity in this country, that people are going to look very unkindly on a scheme to put a government- mandated flap into the seats of their longjohns." - Matthew Mckenzie <mmckenzi@uga.cc.uga.edu>, alt.privacy post about Clipper "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." - Orson Welles "The defendant's objections to the evidence obtained by wire-tapping must, in my opinion, be sustained. It is, of course, immaterial where the physical connection with the telephone wires leading into the defendant's premises was made. And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928) "Some folks have been saying recently, the real message is not so much content at this point but: 'What do we want? BANDWIDTH! When do we want it? NOW!!' 500,000 people on the Capitol steps should do it." - Richard Civille (DC Dir., Center for Civic Networking), nii_agenda mailing list post, 02/23/94 "Don't hate the media. Become the media." - Jello Biafra (formerly of the band Dead Kennedys. Successfully fought an attempt to prosecute him, the group, and various record distributors over the inclusion of an allegedly obscene miniposter by Swiss master surrealist painter, H. R. Giger, in one of their albums.) [The Clipper Chip scheme] "is a focal point for the distrust of goverment." - Clinton Brooks, NSA scientist who led the Clipper Chip project, _Wall_Street_Journal_ interview, 02/22/94 [No kidding, Clint.] "I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire." - Bruce Sterling, remarks on commercial use of private information, at Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference IV, Chicago IL, Mar. 26, 1994. [full transcript available at ftp.eff.org, /pub/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/cfp94_sterling.speech] "Behind all the hype shaping the electronic highway are corporate interests. These huge companies are doing the most natural thing in the world to them; following their own corporate interest." - Herber Schiller, "Information Superhighway: Paving Over the Public", Z Magazine, March 1994 "A trickle-up model for the new information economy could be effective with the proper filters (our own). Ideas bubbling up instead of homogenizing memes raining down." - Scott Marshall, from FringeWare mailing list commentary, March 14, 1994 "The FBI wanted us to introduce the [1994 Digital Telephony] bill today and I said absolutely not. They have to understand they have a Vermonter as the Chairman Of the [Technology and Law] committee and that we Vermonters respect our privacy." - Sen. Patrick Leahy, from James Bandler, "Eavesdropping Measure is Troubling to Leahy", _Rutland_Herald_, Mar. 27, 1994 "Clipper is like a requirement that house keys be 'escrowed' with the local police, or that all photos processed at the local drugstore be double-printed, with copies sent to the local 'Photo Escrow Center.' After all, how else can we catch child pornographers and other 'bad guys'?...And what about those curtains that 'encrypt' the visible contents of houses under surveillance?...Perhaps we need 'approved curtains'...And what about the many crimes people confess in their diaries?...Surely many crimes could be stopped if diaries, journals, and personal letters could be 'escrowed'--with suitable safeguards, of course, to ensure that only legitimate inspections were done (for example, J. Edgar Hoover's need to inspect diaries to find salacious sexual material). "Some may call me 'shrill' for citing the above points. I don't think so. We are at a kind of cusp in history, where privacy can either be secured through strong crypto--despite the crimes that may go undetected or unpunished because of this--or privacy can be handed over to others to protect or not protect as they see fit." - Timothy C. May <tcmay@netcom.com>, Usenet post to talk.politics.crypto, Apr. 13, 1994 "If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can't protect their conversations, in particular their political conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a transition from a free society to a totalitarian society." - Whitfield Diffie of Sun Microsystems, world renowned cryptographer, MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Thursday, 4/7/94 "There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace." - Dave Barry "Speaking or writing in forms not readily understandable to your enemies, your neighbors, your spouse, the cops, or your local eavesdropper is as old as humanity." - Timothy C. May <tcmay@netcom.com>, Usenet post to talk.politics.misc, Apr. 12, 1994 "How do we reconcile the promise of a new high-speed national medium with the threat of a far-reaching, nationwide surveillance network, as foreshadowed by the Clipper chip scheme and the draft Digital Telephony bill? Isn't sacrificing privacy to make policework easier a threat to the principles this nation was founded upon?" - Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>, EFF Online Activist, question posed to panellists at NII Public Interest Summit, Washington DC, Mar. 29, 1994 "Activism is the killer app for the net." - Steven Cherry <stc@panix.com>, .signature file (email footer). "The part that frightens the hell out of me is the goverment deciding where technology goes." - Senator Patrick Leahy, on the FBI's proposed Digital Telephony surveillance legislation, in "Proposed wiretap law set off debate over Justice role", Kevin Power, _Government_Computer_News, Apr. 10, 1994 "Everybody has a different Internet." - Bruce Sterling, from EFF-Austin BoD minutes, Apr. 12, 1994 "But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having." - EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, "Cynthia Horner's Eulogy", Apr. 1994 "Our fear of technology is really a fear of empowerment. We now have the ability to design the reality we live in, and we have to step up to the occasion." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of _CYBERIA_, 1994 "Europe is opposed to the Clipper chip because it fears that the FBI or CIA could target European businesses... The global censorship plan has run up against opposition from European and American businesses that use encryption to send sensitive information. In a position paper to a consulate of European Union intelligence experts...the European organisation representing users of computer security has rejected the Clinton initiative as 'totally unacceptable'...the Information Security Business Advisory Group (Ibag), warns European governments to ignore overtures from the US government aimed at restricting access to the information superhighway to users who use encryption that the government agencies can decode." - UK _Independent_ article, "Spooks all set to hack it on the superhighway", Mar. 5 1994 "There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent on defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to the preservation of society." - Henri Pirenne, _Medieval_Cities,_Their_Origins_and_the_Revival_of_Trade_, 1925 "The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children." - US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, _Butler_v._Michigan_, 352 U.S. 380, 383 (1957) "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"). "Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." - Harry S. Truman "1. Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. 2. No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated." - Article 21, Constitution of Japan "All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy." - Article 1, Section 1, Constitution of the State of California, USA "Did you learn how to think or how to believe?" - father of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who asked the young Nader this while questioning him on what he had learned in school one day. Nader describes this as a seminal event in leading him to become a critic of corporate and government policies. (from an interview with Ralph Nader by David Barsamian) "Democracy is not a spectator sport." - Craig Wilson "There are a lot of dumb people with powerful tools." - Jonah Seiger, former EFF Program Coordinator, 1994 "this is one of the least mature postings i've seen in awhile. is eff so bored?" [sic] - Matt Marx, commenting on the EFF Quotes Collection.