I am not convinced that lack of encryption is the primary problem. The problem with the Internet is that it is meant for communications among non-friends.
Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.
Some people make sharp distinctions sort of between their recreational musings and their professional work. I don't make that distinction very much.
I was, from early on, interested in science. And my parents were very obliging about that. My father used to take me to the museum of natural history, and I knew much more scientific stuff early on. From the time I was 11 or 12, I wanted to be a mathematician.
No right of private conversation was enumerated in the Constitution. I suppose it never occurred to anyone at the time that it could be prevented.
We have experienced an utter explosion in investigative techniques. Walk the streets, look at the cameras! They are now recognising people automatically from photos; we have DNA fingerprinting, infrascan photos that can identify you from the veins in your face.
It's simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets.
I thought cryptography was a technique that did not require your trusting other people-that if you encrypted your files, you would have the control to make the choice as to whether you would surrender your files.
I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology.
Cloud computing is a challenge to security, but one that can be overcome.
Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about.
The decisions we make about communication security today will determine the kind of society we live in tomorrow.
One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance.
Two people can work on a problem better than one.
Intellectual work is essentially a lonely process, and if you can find a way of doing something so that you're in company without being disturbed, that, for me, is the critical thing. I often get to feel isolated so often if I'm sitting either where there aren't people or isn't a view.
I certainly enjoy going on stage and lecturing and talking to Congress. That's a personality explanation. And given government proposals, I thought I had a clear view that they were antagonistic to human freedom.
I call up Amazon. It seems to me they do a major thing wrong, right. I mean, they protect me against the loss of a $50 liability I have of something on my credit card, but they do nothing to protect me against somebody who is watching to see what books I'm interested in, what new perversions I've developed.
If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything.
We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions.
I liked Berkeley tremendously, Berkeley was a very leftist campus. I came to love that city as much as I love Paris or the south of France or New York.
