every computer you use bugs you all the time to — 62: 925-925
So we say “security is a process and not a product”—meaning that we’re going to be discovering — 62: 923-924
in the minibar I hadn’t drunk the — 337: 5132-5133
If all we have between us and tyranny is cryptography and the internet, we’re all dead. We should just surrender. “But that’s not all we have. Look, the cops have guns, and the way we keep them from shooting us isn’t by buying body armor or driving around in tanks. They have jails, and we don’t stop them from locking us up by stockpiling dynamite. “The way we stay free and safe and un-shot and all of that? Politics. Democracy. Holding them to account. It wasn’t so many years ago that Oakland was the first major city to pass a law forcing the city to put every new piece of surveillance, every new database, up for public debate. You saw how hard the surveillance tech companies fought that, how much money they poured into getting it killed. They were scared. Because you know what’s more powerful than all the crypto in the world? An accountable process. Politicians who answer to us, not the billion-dollar companies that hire them when they get out of office. “Technology has its place. We can organize, securely, to a degree that the Black Panthers, the Free Speech Movement, the Yippies, the Wobblies, the Pink Panthers, the American Indian Movement, all those organizers and activists from this area, they couldn’t have even dreamed of. We’d be idiots not to use those tools. But we’d be bigger idiots to just use those tools. The most important tool we have for curbing official abuses of power is consensual, legitimate, democratic government. That’s what we have to use the tools for. “I’ve known Masha here for a decade, and I’ve never doubted that she was a brilliant technologist. I mean, she was definitely worth every penny Xoth and Zyz paid her. But Masha”—and she turned to me, a gentle smile on her face—“you’ve never been very smart about politics. You’ve got tunnel vision, you think that if the tech doesn’t solve the problem, it can’t be solved. “We can solve these problems, Masha. With your help, we can tool up to resist. When we resist we can organize. When we organize, we can win.” — 381: 5800-5817
“Technology won’t save their asses. We know that better than anyone. Technology is a tool that gives us the space to make political change. Politics are a tool we use to open the space for making better technology. It’s like parallel parking: you go as far as you can in one direction, then back up and go as far as you can in the other. Use tech to make political achievements, use politics to improve tech. Back and forth.” — 384: 5843-5846
we weren’t trying to beat the system with superior technology, we were trying to use technology to open up a space to change the system. It didn’t have to be perfect, it didn’t have to keep everyone anonymous or impervious to snooping: it just had to work well enough to organize political change. — 388: 5912-5914
To make lasting structural changes, you need to use technology to change politics. In other words: technology is a tool for social change because it can temporarily shelter you from the all-seeing eye of a corrupt state, and because it can temporarily give you a force multiplier to take on the powerful—and what you need to do during that temporary, technologically dependent window is reform your society so that your government is just and responsive and transparent. Technology cannot substitute for a just society, but it can help you create that society. — 444: 6743-6748