If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. Philip Zimmermann
Sometimes in a democracy bad people can be elected, and if democracy is allowed to function normally, these people can be taken out of power by the next election. But if a future government inherits a technology infrastructure that’s optimized for surveillance, where they can watch the movements of their political opposition, they can see every bit of travel they could do, every financial transaction, every communication, every bit of email, every phone call, everything could be filtered and scanned and automatically recognized by voice recognition technology and transcribed. As we extrapolate our technologies into the future, if the incumbency has that political advantage over their opposition, then if a bad government ever comes to power, it may be the last government we ever elect. Philip Zimmermann
I think it’s incumbent upon us, to examine public policy issues about technology, and ask ourselves: ‘What technologies would strengthen the hand of the police state?’, and then don’t deploy those technologies. Philip Zimmermann
…strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Philip Zimmermann