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"Wiretapping of email is delicate for two reasons. First, lawmakers have not yet defined rules that make sense in the online world….
Second, the information available online is astonishingly comprehensive. We talk about wiretapping because the principle is as old as eavesdropping on telephone calls, but the wire is an inadequate image. Online surveillance is not much like listening to an ephemeral conversation. It is about accessing a vast mine of electronic data. All the information that currently enjoys legal protection – relating to our health, finances and communications – is increasingly discoverable online."

—The name’s Bond, James Bond. I’m a programmer, FT

(Source: ft.com)

"I have also started to use social media networks like Facebook. Oftentimes, the legacy media only partially quote what politicians say. This has prevented the public from understanding my true intentions. So I am now sending messages through Facebook and other networks directly to the public."

—Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in Foreign Affairs

(Source: foreignaffairs.com)

"Simply put, a free press can not report meaningfully on matters of national importance when they have reason to believe their activities might be logged and algorithmically analyzed by the government at all times — nor can the general public speak freely."

—Joshua Kopstein, “Metadata matters: how phone records and obsolete laws harm privacy and the free press”, The Verge

"Making programmers, engineers, and policymakers legally liable for the autonomous weapons they deploy would break new ground in how accountability works in warfare. But it would also create incentives that make firing weapons less likely, rather than more — surely the end result so many rights groups want to achieve."

—Joshua Foust, “A Liberal Case for Drones”, Foreign Policy

(Source: foreignpolicy.com)

"The beauty of TransferWise is that it almost entirely bypasses banks, which use every opportunity to wring out every last cent from overseas transfers. While it is relatively easy to move money within the EU—the key word being relatively—getting it over more consequential borders can be expensive and time-consuming. Banks charge hefty fees, convert at rates favorable to themselves, and tend to ask questions."

—“Facebook’s first funder just backed TransferWise, a startup that’s like an ancient Islamic money transfer system”, Leo Mirani, Quartz

(Source: qz.com)

"There are so many mobile comms apps with over 1m downloads on Google Play that I’ve given up counting."

—Ben Evans Newsletter

(Source: ben-evans.com)

"I think you’re describing a world of tracking which I think is highly unlikely to occur, because people will be upset about it in the same way you are. Governments won’t allow it, and it’ll be bad business. And ultimately, in a competitive market, companies want the consumers to be happy. So it’s true tracking in this context…you’re taking a much broader view of the word [‘tracking’] than any I would use. A situation where you go to people and say, ‘Oh, here’s our phone, and we’re going to track you to death,’ people are not going to buy that phone. It’s just a bad business model."

—Eric Schmidt to Nouriel Roubini at NYU Stern

(Source: Fast Company)

"You see a lot of talk in the media. You know, ‘Obama has a vastly superior technological campaign’ and stuff. If it was vastly superior, it was 1.6 percentage points vastly superior."

—Harvard Political Scientist Brian Enos to National Journal author Brian Fung about whether Obama’s big data advantage was a myth

(Source: nationaljournal.com)