Bruce Schneier on the Predator drone unencrypted video snafu:
Sometimes mediocre encryption is better than strong encryption, and sometimes no encryption is better still.
Read through to the end; Schneier makes a good point about how the key management requirements of the NSAs Cold War era encryption schemes are limiting their use in today's military environment.
Airlock allows your Mac to lock itself, plain and simple. Using your iPhone or iPod Touch, Bluetooth, and a smidgen of pixie dust, Airlock determines whether you're near your computer.
Bruce Schneier points to a paper that explains why terrorism doesn't work. I've always wondered why people think that terrorists are out to kill everyone. From Schneier's post:
People tend to infer the motives -- and also the disposition -- of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to -- and is a violent person -- and not because he's play-acting. If you read about someone getting into a car accident, you assume it's because he's a bad driver and not because he was simply unlucky. And -- more importantly for this column -- if you read about a terrorist, you assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.
... the most insightful part is when Abrams uses correspondent inference theory to explain why terrorist groups that primarily attack civilians do not achieve their policy goals, even if they are minimalist. Abrams writes:
The theory posited here is that terrorist groups that target civilians are unable to coerce policy change because terrorism has an extremely high correspondence. Countries believe that their civilian populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is protesting unfavorable external conditions such as territorial occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer the short-term consequences of terrorism -- the deaths of innocent civilians, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, economic contraction, and the inevitable erosion of civil liberties -- (are) the objects of the terrorist groups. In short, target countries view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be motivated by these maximalist objectives.
In other words, terrorism doesn't work, because it makes people less likely to acquiesce to the terrorists' demands, no matter how limited they might be. The reaction to terrorism has an effect completely opposite to what the terrorists want; people simply don't believe those limited demands are the actual demands.
I've been holding off posting about the "Bomb Scare" in Boston yesterday because I wanted to see what Bruce Schneier would say about it. Most of the time he articulates my position on these sorts of things much better than I could. Schneier just posted his reaction. The first sentence of his post is "The story is almost too funny to write about seriously."
Thankfully, the folks who the Boston Police arrested have the right attitude:
