William Binney:

If you have a terrorist talking to somebody ... that's the first degree ... And then the second degree would be who that person ... talked to. So that becomes your zone of suspicion. ... Everybody else is innocent -- I mean, you know, of terrorism, anyway.

Jennifer Granick:

Any data might be "relevant" to an investigation eventually, if by "eventually" you mean "sometime before the end of time." If all data is "relevant," it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.

Thomas Beller:

This is one of the central paradoxes of our culture: everything is swallowed into oblivion but nothing goes away. On the screen, it's no longer clear who is in charge of the words, or at what point they cross the line between being a fluid, rearrangeable thing in your mind and being a verifiable statement made in public, on the record, for which you may one day have to answer. Many people are worried, understandably, that everything we do -- online and off -- is retrievable by the government. But what about everything we think? How much space do we afford ourselves for private thought?

Dennis Overbye:

Is there solace to be found in the vision of places and people we can never know or reach?

Jill Lepore:

Two months after the Mazzini affair began, the Secret Department of the Post Office was abolished. What replaced it, in the long run, was even sneakier: better-kept secrets.

Neil Gaiman:

The problems of failure are hard.

The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.