Schneier On the War On the Unexpected

jamie found this essay by Bruce Schneier, The War on the Unexpected. (It originally appeared in Wired but this version has all the links.) "We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested — even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats... After someone reports a 'terrorist threat,' the whole system is biased towards escalation and CYA instead of a more realistic threat assessment... If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security."

CYA : Cover Your Ass!!

[Anonymous Coward]

CYA : Cover Your Ass!! Know you now.

Beyond Fear

[necro81]

For those interested in hearing Bruce Schneier dispassionately and quite reasonably shred a lot of the "security" measures implemented since 9/11, I suggest reading his book Beyond Fear [amazon.com]. The subtitle says it all: thinking sensibly about security in an uncertain world. The book was reviewed [slashdot.org] on Slashdot not long ago.

The book takes a very general approach to security, analyzing it with the most basic categorizations, while using very clear real-life examples to illustrate. The final chapters deal specifically with security against terrorism, particularly since 9/11. His conclusion is that, from a security standpoint, most of the measures put in place - additional airport scrutiny, massive centralized databases looking for suspicious patterns, the move towards national ID cards, etc. - are largely ineffective as security measures. The massive trade-off of decreased privacy and liberty coupled with enormous cost for these measures make them especially unreasonable. In short, the widespread perceived risk and culture of fear it has fostered has made our response to the new terroristic threat wildly out-of-proportion with the actual risk.

It's mostly preaching to the choir here at Slashdot, but I think this book should be as widely read as possible.

Re:Dejavu

[ShiningSomething]

I don't know where this is coming from.

Well, there's the "If you see something, say something" campaign in New York City. There is the rhetoric of posting the "alert level" daily in Washington, DC. There is the fact that if you're a foreign student you should inform Homeland Security of your whereabouts once you've been admitted into the country, and that if you happen to be studying something like Physics you may be delayed every time you come into the country. No-one's against checking the bags at the airport. There is a day-to-day feeling of mistrust that is obviously not Nazi Germany, but is palpably higher than before 9-11.

Re:Dejavu

[tomstdenis]

Except that only a very small minority of passengers are actually "kidnapped," and in fact they are being released.

It's not perfect, and frankly, probably not right (I don't know both sides of the story, who says they're unjustified? The media?).

It's important to keep tabs and an eye on the situation. It is however, not important to listen to Bruce Schneier as he's just another idiot soap box screamer trying to push book sales. You can be pro-freedom and not listen to Bruce at the same time :-)

Re:Dejavu

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

deported to Syria for failing to produce a Canadian passport

First Google result for "Maher Arar canadian passport" [www.cbc.ca].

2nd paragraph:
"even though he was carrying a Canadian passport."

It's hardly the US's or Canada's fault that the Syrian government tortured him
Except that it was known at the time he was being deported that he would be tortured.

But I guess I agree with you. If you're a dual citizen - even in a country where that's legal - you should be deported and tortured. You obviously have it coming.

Re:Sorry, Bruce, you're just wrong....

[Alzheimers]

Also, on another rant. What's YOUR solution, Bruce? You tell us how NOT to do it, but you have no solutions yourself. Oh wait, you do... you tell us we should do EXACTLY what you rant against:

Actually, he wrote a whole book on the subject. [slashdot.org] What have you done?