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07/15/2005: "Bruce Schneier in Turnrow"
Here is another great Bruce Schneier interview in Turnrow, talking mostly about security and risks, and how decisions about them are made, and should be made.
It's a rather lengthy article, so I'll toss in some quotes and key points here:
- There's a lot of irrationality about security these days, especially about national security. Many of the security measures we're seeing post-9/11 simply don't make sense. There are people who blindly believe that they're all vital to our nation's security, and there are others that are just as convinced they're all ridiculous. And the two sides can't seem to talk to each other.
- Security decisions are most often made for non-security reasons.
- As soon as you profile, you create an avenue for the attacker to gain an advantage.
- Trained guards watching the crowd, looking for suspicious people or actions, works.
- If we defend all of our airplanes, and the terrorists switch to shopping malls, have we really gained anything?
- Risks can never be brought down to zero. ... Life itself is risk. As you said, sometimes the rabbit gets eaten.
- If you look around at our nation's security, it's obvious that we're defending against last year's terrorist threat.
- We know what terrorism is. It's someone blowing himself up in a crowded restaurant, or flying an airplane into a skyscraper. It's not infecting computers with viruses, forcing air traffic controllers to route planes manually, or shutting down a pager network for a day. That spreads annoyance and irritation, not terror.
- [Security] trade-offs are cheaper if they're "spent" by someone else.
- For the most part, people have very little control over the security in their lives.