Matt Blaze Quotes

#1. Computer science doesn't know how to build complex systems that work reliably. This has been a well-understood problem since the very beginning of programmable computers.

Matt Blaze

#2. What encryption lets us do is say, "Yes, the Internet is insecure." Bad guys are able to compromise computers everywhere, but we're able to tolerate that because if they do intercept our messages, they can't do any harm with it.

Matt Blaze

#3. As the local police department might want to decrypt a phone of a criminal suspect, so would the Chinese or the Russian or the Iranian intelligence agencies like to be able to do exactly the same thing.

Matt Blaze

#4. As we build systems that are more and more complex, we make more and more subtle but very high-impact mistakes. As we use computers for more things and as we build more complex systems, this problem of unreliability and insecurity is actually getting worse, with no real sign of abating anytime soon.

Matt Blaze

#5. It's only after you get down into the technical weeds - and they are admittedly rather weedy - that it becomes clear that this is much harder than it seems and not something we're going to be able to solve.

Matt Blaze

#6. In order for any smartphone manufacturer to decrypt the data on your phone, it has to hold onto a secret that lets it get that access. And that secret or that database of secrets becomes an extremely valuable and useful target for intelligence agencies.

Matt Blaze

#7. The security of computers and the Internet is a horrible and dangerous mess. Every week we hear about breaches of databases of Social Security numbers and financial information and health records, and about critical infrastructure being insecure.

Matt Blaze

#8. On balance, the use of encryption, just like the use of good locks on doors, has the net effect of preventing a lot more crime than it might assist.

Matt Blaze

#9. We basically have only two real tried and true techniques that can help counter this. One of them is to make systems as simple as we can, and there are limits to that because we can only simplify things so much. The other is the use of encryption.

Matt Blaze

#10. The people working in my field also are quite skeptical of our ability to do this. It ultimately boils down to the problem of building complex systems that are reliable and that work, and that problem has long predated the problem of access to encryption keys.

Matt Blaze