The always-cogent security guru Bruce Schneier has a fine editorial in Wired today, with the useful epiphany that when our government overlords prattle on about how we can't afford privacy any more, it's just so much authoritarian hogwash.
Which of course we knew -- but it's always nice to have experts agree.
Read the whole article, it's worth your time, but what I think are the key insights are these.
- Security based on identity is what authoritarians believe in: i.e., we can be safe if we keep bad guys out.
- Security based on actions is what engineers believe in: i.e. we can be safe if we keep people from doing bad things (by intent or by accident.)
- Most of what Homeland Security does falls into the first category.
- They're wrong.
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