Babbage:

The first thing is to be rightly suspicious of anything that looks too good to be true. There are consequences for those who succumb to the temptation.

Rebecca Solnit:

The virtual version rips out the heart of the thing, shrink-wraps it, sticks a barcode on, and throws the rest away. This horseman is called Efficiency. He is followed by the horseman called Profitability. Along with Convenience, they trample underfoot the subtle encounters that suffuse a life with meaning.

Brian Stelter:

The debate over the rules ... seems to have resulted in a classic Washington solution -- the kind that pleases no one on either side of the issue.

Bruce Sterling:

It is a godawful mess. This is gonna get worse before it gets better, and it's gonna get worse for a long time. Like leaks in a house where the pipes froze.

Evgeny Morozov:

We all get scared when we find out that the government knows what we browse online -- but we are far less concerned about some private company knowing this. The question we rarely ask is: Why assume that the government won't simply purchase this data from the private sector rather than compile on its own?

Andrew Ross Sorkin:

Legally, the government is allowed to use any publicly available information -- as long as the government wasn't involved in illegally obtaining the information itself.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri:

Most customers aren't aware that the personalized book recommendations they receive are a result of paid promotions, not just purchase-derived data.

Pamela S. Karlan:

Politicians have constitutional responsibilities, too. And if they showed more restraint, judges would not have to intervene so often.