Bruce Schneier: Why Collecting More Data Doesn't Increase Safety 149
Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Bruce Schneier, security expert (and rational voice in the wilderness), explains in an editorial on CNN why 'Connecting the Dots' is a 'Hindsight Bias.' In heeding calls to increase the amount of surveillance data gathered and shared, agencies like the FBI have impaired their ability to discover actual threats, while guaranteeing erosion of personal and civil freedom. 'Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. The television show Person of Interest is fiction, not fact.'"
Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck if he thinks he convince the American public that televised fiction isn't fact.
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Good luck if he thinks he convince the American public that televised fiction isn't fact.
Indeed. From what I understand almost everyone believes TV shows as documentaries.
"24" convinced people that beating the crap out of suspects is often the only (and effective) way
"CSI" convinced people that the crappiest image can be enhanced up to a perfectly clear picture in a few clicks.
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Yes, but thats more of a strategic thing. If you are going to have a big gathering, a bunch of good cameras would be pretty good to identify problems later on.
On the other hand, checking what everybody, everywhere, did on the internet the night and years before that may not be a great benefit.
You want more good and relevant information, always, and while just increasing the general amount of information may actually help get more relevant information, it doesn't always seem to be the best way possible.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
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You are kidding right? I've got news for you. Between you and Schneier one of you is absolutely an idiot, the other is definitely not, and the one who isn't is a world renowned security expert.
Schneier is a cryptographer, computer security specialist.
He knows as much about police work and catching criminals or preventing crime as your average sewer worker.
I don't know what that pedestal you place him on is made of, but it seems to attract a lot of flies.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
He knows as much about police work and catching criminals or preventing crime as your average sewer worker.
Not very useful unless you determine how much the average sewer worker knows. If they watch the appropriate TV shows, they might actually know a lot both about how crime occurs and the process of catching criminals, despite the notorious exaggerations and biases of that medium.
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Which appropriate TV shows beside documentaries? :P
Re: Fiction, not fact. (Score:1)
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OP: "World renowned cryptographer and security expert Bruce Schneier is an idiot!"
Me: "Making such a statement is proof that you (the OP) are the actual idiot.
I hope this helps!
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Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Informative)
they identified a lot of people on the cameras. a witness told them which guys were the culprits. the realtime videos did zilch to stop them from leaving bags unattended.
but the point really is that because they got so much intel, they ignored the intel which said that the guys were nutcases. they had a whole city of suspects beforehand so feds didn't spend any agents on surveillance on these guys.. which would have made it fairly obvious that they were gonna do something stupid, so they could have then allocated more agents on surveillance on the culprits, so they could have searched them when they were on their way to the marathon.
I mean, they do such ops monthly in Boston for catching pot dealers.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
they identified a lot of people on the cameras. a witness told them which guys were the culprits. the realtime videos did zilch to stop them from leaving bags unattended. ...
feds didn't spend any agents on surveillance on these guys. which would have made it fairly obvious that they were gonna do something stupid,
First, surveillance is not about prevention, it is ALWAYS about catching people after the fact.
You can't seriously be suggesting that the realtime video (it wasn't real time, it was recorded) should be enough to have a policeman appear the instant you take your backpack off and put it at your feet? Do you want to live in a society where there are actually enough cops for that?
The feds didn't spend ANY time surveilling these guys. They ask him some questions in 2011, and he gave all the right answers at the time. Do you really want to live in a society where the mere mention of your name gets you assigned a 24/7 surveillance team for YEARS AND YEARS into the future?
Thing about what you are suggesting. Wouldn't you be the first one to jump on Slashdot and bitch about an FBI team following you around because of something someone else said about you?
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>First, surveillance is not about prevention, it is ALWAYS about catching people after the fact.
so it is irrelevant for terrorism, suicide missions.
widespread data gathering + law systems so convoluted that everybody is violating something = widespread control.
Welcome to the present planet earth.
Re:Fiction, not fact. They had been suspects prior (Score:1)
They had been suspects prior, from what I have read and heard. The FBI and other unknown agencies had questioned the two long before the bombings. You have, about 20 American neo-nazi groups that are going to resort to using terror tactics, and the FBI and other agencies have no idea who will be the ones to start it. But they have files on the the people they dub to be a threat, usually the ones most active in spreading the message, and it is almost a a sure bet it will be the followers that have not been p
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Check your facts.
One (not both) had been questioned at the request of the russians. The russians refused to supply enough information about the nature of their prior request, and the FBI questions were answered satisfactorily.
Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really on either count, though there is certainly an idiot involved here--just not Schneier.
The Boston guys were identified by having one camera showing one of the guys PLANTING THE DAMNED BOMB. Everything else was confirmation. Facial recognition did not help. Spying on people's cell phones did not help. All the high tech crap that law enforcement is always saying they need was almost totally useless, as would every other camera have been had one not been pointing at where one of the suspects planted explosives. If you start from the end point, it's kind of easy to work your way back. I'm not saying the other cameras were uselss, only that they were not useful in primary identification of the first suspect.
Case in point: humans who work for the FBI do not particularly have, on average, better observation skills or vision than anybody else. What they did have was information they didn't share with anybody else at first, specifically the video of the planting of the explosive. Lacking that bit of rather important data, the Internet community tried to prove the value of social networking and crowdsourcing (because we all know those things are superior to absolutely everything, right?), and managed to incorrectly identify several people as suspects who had nothing to do with the bombing at all. In other words, they were spectacularly wrong in absolutely every detail. Despite my sincerest hopes, this will probably not be the knife that stabs social networking in the back, though a man can dream I suppose.
Bottom line: having the video data available was useful. Having video data of a public place is not in and of itself privacy invading, especially when it's only looked at to solve an actual crime. What is privacy invading, and ultimately useless, is doing things like facial recognition, cell phone location tracking, and other things that build up a specific database of where people have been and at what time "just in case". That is the kind of thing we do NOT need more of, or any of, and this case proves exactly that, not the opposite. So the FBI won this battle, and good for them and for the rest of us that they did, but here's hoping that the method of that victory also helps them lose the war on privacy. Schneier is quite the genius.
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Re:Fiction, not fact. (Score:5, Informative)
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Whatta ya mean? Next you'll be saying chimps aren't monkeys. Or bombs work without the red wire. Or that corpses don't mummify naturally.
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Good luck if he thinks he convince the American public that televised fiction isn't fact.
Indeed. From what I understand almost everyone believes TV shows as documentaries.
"24" convinced people that beating the crap out of suspects is often the only (and effective) way
"CSI" convinced people that the crappiest image can be enhanced up to a perfectly clear picture in a few clicks.
Oh, yes, please heap some more insult on Americans. Don't bother with a citation, just dig deep into your sack of bullshit and hurl away.
Ask yourself who is dumber and more gullible, the guy who watches entertaining make believe-drama (and knows its make-believe drama), or the clown who assumes all americans believe the make-believe drama, simply because someone told him so.
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Oh, yes, please heap some more insult on Americans. Don't bother with a citation, just dig deep into your sack of bullshit and hurl away.
I didn't say all Americans, but the effect is common and well known. Here's some references for you if you'd like to educate yourself (the CSI thing has a Wiki article for a while now)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect [wikipedia.org]
http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=460 [worlddialogue.org]
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Did you read past the second sentence of your first link:
While this belief is widely held among American legal professionals, some studies have suggested that crime shows are unlikely to cause such an effect.
As for the second link, pure rubbish, which never once seriously suggests or offers any evidence that ANYONE believe the torcher aspect of the show.
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I work in the security industry, and the 'CSI Effect' is very well known. Ask any salescritter in this industry and they'll tell you stories of multiple prospective clients who want to be able to do truly ridiculous things with their security cameras. The good ones gently correct them, the bad ones say, "Of course we can do that!"
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You should listen to your dad more often
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2011/04/fingerprint-evaluations-reliable-998-of-the-time/1 [usatoday.com]
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Nice straw man.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
image enhancement (Score:3)
Nah... we've been convinced of that since Blade Runner at the latest. Probably much earlier.
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Good luck if he thinks he convince the American politicians that televised fiction isn't fact.
Yes that really is better.
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Good luck if he thinks he convince the American public that televised fiction isn't fact.
The real question is...To whom do the benefits go? If you believe the Gutterment is concerned about your safety, then why the NDAA?
It's obvious that the confiscation of firearms is virtually impossible but, buying all the ammunition they can purchase with your tax money will make ammunition for those same firearms very expensive. This in turn will cause the remaining ammo to skyrocket in price, guess who's going to sell that ammunition to you? Would you buy it, trust that it will work?
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Enhance (Score:2)
Person of Interest (Score:1)
"The television show Person of Interest is fiction, not fact." - I'd more characterize it as an fs*cking fairy tale, not just fiction.
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i'd classify it as propaganda to get people to like the idea of a total surveillance police state because there's good-guy superheroes (including an ex-spook and a philanthropic billionaire. and don't forget the dog. doggies are nice and good guys are nice to dogs, it's the easiest way for you to know that they're good guys) protecting people who need protection from bad guys.
No Person X Re:Person of Interest (Score:2)
After the fact... (Score:2)
Re:After the fact... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. So the "compromise" could be lots of data collected but only kept for a short time (weeks, not years).
On the other hand, the frequency of any threats is so rare that do we really want to erode our liberties like this? Is regular police work just not capable of "connecting the dots" without this kind of surveillance?
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
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So the "compromise" could be lots of data collected but only kept for a short time (weeks, not years).
Or requiring a warrant to access the data.
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Not a good idea, 9/11 onwards, they have to always include a clause along the lines of: "In cases where the officer writes down any of these phrases 'terrorist', 'child pornography', or 'national security', the officer may then immediately access the information, and then, if they want to, may later apply to the FISA court where a warrant will automatically be granted."
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Given the government's track record for such things, I'd rather not have the data be collected at all.
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The MIC creates "programs" (Bush mentioned that many times), which in reality are the creation of haystacks so that taxpayer money can be spent on these MIC "programs" looking for the needles in the created haystacks that contain no needles. But the MIC gets the money anyway. And since there are no needles in the fabricated haystacks, (damn, that "program" was not funded enough, we need more money, we
Re:After the fact... (Score:4, Insightful)
.. the collection of data helps after the fact, i.e., once someone is caught. The additional data allows a more solid case to be built, and makes it easier to find co-conspirators.
I'll buy that. Once you know who you can go back and sift through logs, security camera footage, peoples cell phone snaps, phone records, etc and find evidence. I don't Bruce would argue otherwise.
But...Where mass murder and terrorism is concerned what is our objective? Make sure we can punish the guilty or prevent attacks?
So far I am not aware of any revelation that has come out of all the surveillance that would have helped us 'prevent' the bombing. Plenty of things we might have done, but all things we already knew we could be doing but had rejected for reasons of civil liberties, cost, character of our nation etc.
Its also entirely possible that something that helps us identify and punish the guilty after the fact harms our ability to detect and prevent in terms of to much hay.
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But...Where mass murder and terrorism is concerned what is our objective? Make sure we can punish the guilty or prevent attacks?
So far I am not aware of any revelation that has come out of all the surveillance that would have helped us 'prevent' the bombing. Plenty of things we might have done, but all things we already knew we could be doing but had rejected for reasons of civil liberties, cost, character of our nation etc.
You are exactly right, there is nothing that would be effective in "preventing" the bombing which would not render the country a total police state.
Yes, we lost a few lives, and yes lots of people were hurt.
We lost a hell of alot more lives building a nation where we have the right to walk down town with a backpack without being stopped and questioned. (Except perhaps if you are Black and live in some portions of NYC).
There are simply not enough police to tail every miscreant or potential felon in the coun
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The certainty of being caught is the best weapon we have right now.
So what you are saying is that we have no effective weapon. The 911 terrorists did not even expect to survive if successful. I don't think they had much concern about being caught.
It appears the Boston bomber killed his older brother rather than allowing him to be taken alive. When your would be attackers don't value their own lives punishment capital or otherwise is not an effective deterrent.
So back to the original questions. Is the data collection itself turning our society into something different
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You REALLY think suicide bombers are bothered by the fact that you'll know they did it after they did it?
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Replying to myself, I know, but...
You don't need surveillance to find that out, you just have to solve the puzzle...
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You REALLY think suicide bombers are bothered by the fact that you'll know they did it after they did it?
In the Boston case, they apparently had no stomach for suicide, and were gullible enough to believe they would get away with it (they didn't even try to leave town). Only after they saw their pictures all over the TV did they try to steal a car.
These were not real bright guys.
And neither are your average suicide bomber from what I have been reading. The "true believers in the cause" have pretty much been expended and the terror masters now prefer the weak minded and gullible with nothing to lose.
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nothing to lose.
The FARC and possibly the PLO have been known to find deeply-indebted people with terminal diseases and offer to pay off their debt a
A lack of concern for freedom. (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem here is that people just don't seem to care about freedom if they believe that something will keep them safe (or at least makes them feel safe). Even if it were true that the TSA, ubiquitous government surveillance, free speech zones, the Patriot Act, and warrantless surveillance in general kept people safe, that wouldn't make them any less wrong. Indeed, the main problem is that people seem to generally be spineless cowards who give up freedom for safety and are easily manipulated (especially after a disaster).
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Sort of, the right seems to care more about their right to bear arms than to rights that are actually meaningful in day to day life. If we ever get to the point where private ownership of firearms is going to make a difference, we've got more serious problems on our hands.
Focusing on things like real trials rather than show trials and actually having an independent judiciary would make a much larger difference in the long run.
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Guns just represent liberty and self-reliance. They are the start of the slippery slope that includes spray paint, decongestant, pressure cookers, and sharp kitchen knives.
The gun grabbing mentality preaches that we are all helpless and need to wait for the nanny state to sort things out should anything go wrong. It implies a contempt for the electorate that should be more obvious to more people.
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But the second amendment isn't the entirety of the constitution, and some people seem to have forgotten that.
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Uh (Score:2)
Needle-in-a-haystack problem? Really? Seriously, in the post-PC era... data mining gets more difficult as the amount of data increases? uh... I've always thought that to gain any meaningful stats, you need a large enough sample...
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This security expert has probably been hip deep in the problem. He's not just some random anonymous loser on some web forum posting from his mother's basement.
He's certainly not the first person to bring up this issue.
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not a problem of statistics, this is a problem of identifying individual terrorists. Even if you could determine exactly how many terrorists there are, it would help you absolutely nothing to prevent the next terror act. You have to know who the terrorist is.
You can stare at the weather statistics of the last ten centuries as much as you want, it won't help you much when trying to predict when and where the next lightning will strike.
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I don't disagree with your point, but I think the analogy is flawed.
If you can stare at weather statistics with sufficient data to see what circumstances resulted in lightening strikes, then you can accurately predict where extra effort needs to be taken to avoid them. In fact that sounds really useful and much like what we do with tornados for example. The statistics don't tell you that there will be a tornado at a certain place at a certain time, but the do tell you when they are likely enough to sound th
The opposite. (Score:5, Insightful)
That works for trends. Not for the actions of individuals.
From TFA:
He's a bit wrong there. It isn't a million unnumbered pictures. It's one picture per person in the country at the time. That's over 300 million pictures. Each one overlapping millions of other pictures.
And after a certain point you are just amplifying the "noise". And enough "noise" can appear to be a pattern.
It is only after an event that the "noise" can be filtered out and the extraneous pictures discarded.
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As the sample set's size tends to infinity, so does the computational power and/or the time required for effective mining (ceteris paribus, of course).
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Until you are awash in data. Then you run into a practicality wall. Not to mention limitations on what variables are actually meaningful (i.e. What actually is meaningful? How meaningful? What variables don't we know about? What about counter indicators? etc). After all, these systems are well known for disturbingly large false positives and false negatives.
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To an extent statistics are valuable, however it's difficult to establish what to track with any certainty. Prior to 9/11 it wouldn't have occurred to anybody to track flight schools for possible terrorists as the worst cases previously were flights to Cuba and generally the pilot was trained to just voluntarily make the trip to keep people safe.
OTOH, we do know that things like building height, clear line of site and lighting do correlate with local crime rates and making the conditions that commonly accom
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The problem is that you have to store and process all of that data. And much of that data isn't in a form that the computer system can process. Which means that they're storing tons of data that they'll never be able to use, or will at most be able to use it after they've determined whom to arrest. But, in terms of prevention, which is what safety is about, it doesn't do you any real good.
Remember that statistics can talk about populations accurately, but if you try and take that description and apply it to
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Don't think. You weaken the nation. (seriously)
Re:Uh (Score:4, Insightful)
How to accomplish that? The simplest way is to catch them right before they are about to attack. For example, we could read the minds of individuals who are experienced in seeing the future, call them pre-cogs. Then when they are in agreement, we can catch the terrorist with our future crime force, lead by Tom Cruise.
Just kidding. Bruce Schneier doesn't give an plan on how to stop future terrorists, his point is that there's no reason to shred even more civil liberties in order to try to catch terrorists, especially since it probably won't help.
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The problem is that you cannot tell the needle from the hay until AFTER you pricked yourself.
Or, to get out of the idiom, you don't know what data is actually meaningful before the terrorist strikes.
Collecting Data vs. Analysis (Score:2)
Obvious, but Bruce does good marketing.
CC.
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It is always possible to collect data, and simply save it. Nobody has to search, nobody has to listen.
Until, maybe a year or two later, when a PERIOD of Interest is identified, which reduces what is to be searched immensely.
The lies from monsters like Schneier (Score:1)
The purpose of intelligence agencies in powerful nations has NOTHING to do with threats from 'criminals' and 'terrorists'. No, it is about giving the true masters of these societies the most perfect control possible of the 'mob'.
Today, the internet allows those that rule you to get feedback in real-time that explains the effectiveness of ANY governmental PR campaign disseminated by the mass media. If the response of the sheeple is 'wrong', the message can be immediately re-engineered and broadcast again. Re
Thanks for confirming what he said (Score:2)
What good did all the control and data for the USSR and East-Germany? The latter really had perfected the art of its citizens spying on its citizens and still: It just collapsed. You can't really control a population. There are just too many people and when they decide to do something all your control is moot.
That's actually the point Schneier tries to make: From a certain point on collecting more and more data the ROI (and eroding civil liberties is one of those "investments") just isn't there anymore. You
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Bruce says we need LESS surveillance, and you call him a liar and monster?
Did you read the article?
And what the hell is that at the end about Fabio? Sure, he's got great hair and a strong chiseled chin, but even he understands that without those less good-looking, he wouldn't be able to earn a living selling them butter substitutes.
you obviously replied to a joke. Fabians and all, hilarious. almost as hilarious as scientologists.
Didn't the FBI say something similar (Score:4, Interesting)
False positives (Score:3)
So you are walking in thin ice, you could get big charges for something that you don't see as a crime (or see it as a joke or a prank). And people do weird things in that kind of situations,
Unwarranted assumption (Score:2)
It was never about increasing safety. Loss of civil rights is a feature, not a bug.
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He pretty much debunks the bait we get sold to bite the hook.
More basic issues (Score:1)
Bruce Schneier facts (Score:5, Funny)
Bruce Schneier doesn't need to hide data with steganography - data hides from Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier knows who the Anonymous Coward is
Bruce Schneier can recite pi. Backwards.
Bruce Schneier can securely wipe any hard drive by shaking it like an etch-a-sketch.
Bruce Schneier knows Chuck Norris' private key.
Bruce Schneier can write a recursive program that proves the Riemann Hypothesis. In Malbolge.
Bruce Schneier can read captchas.
Hashes collide because they're swerving to avoid Bruce Schneier.
Bruce Schneier is the root of all certificates.
Bruce Schneier intercepts all your internal monologues by a man-in-the-middle attack.
http://www.schneierfacts.com/ [schneierfacts.com]
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Bruce Schneier accurately predicts the random.
http://www.schneierfacts.com/facts/485 [schneierfacts.com]
More surveillance (Score:1)
Add needles with the hay (Score:1)
The question is if the needle to hay ratio is better in the added hay.
If there was no needles in the original haystack, adding more hay may add a needle.
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