Death and the NSA: A Q&A With Bruce Schneier

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Since Edward Snowden's disclosures about widespread NSA surveillance, Americans and people everywhere have been presented with a digital variation on an old analog threat: the erosion of freedoms and privacy in exchange, presumably, for safety and security. Bruce Schneier knows the debate well. He's an expert in cryptography and he wrote the book on computer security; Applied Cryptography is one of the field's basic resources, 'the book the NSA never wanted to be published,' raved Wired in 1994. He knows the evidence well too: lately he's been helping the Guardian and the journalist Glenn Greenwald review the documents they have gathered from Snowden, in order to help explain some of the agency's top secret and highly complex spying programs. To do that, Schneier has taken his careful digital privacy regime to a new level, relying on a laptop with an encrypted hard drive that he never connects to the internet. That couldn't prevent a pilfered laptop during, say, a 'black bag operation,' of course. 'I know that if some government really wanted to get my data, there'd be little I could do to stop them,' he says."

Comments

Re:I thought

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot just kill yourself, then babble endlessly on the Tome of Faces Crossed Over about your meta existence while expecting to "Rest in Peace". Charon may promise safe passage, that those pesky "seers" won't stalk you, but don't be surprised when one unearths your casket and has his way with your corpse.

Re:false flag?

[lennier]

queue the outrage!

Sorry, my outrage is strictly in a FIFO stack. I'm now scheduled to be outraged about (pop) let's see... orang-utans in Guatemala... who are (pop) racist against French children.

Re:So then,

[Bucc5062]

"which organism in nature has developed an unassailable position, from which it cannot be dislodged?"

Cats.

Consider, they domesticated mankind thousands of years ago, having discovered just how weak our minds can be, We feed them, care for them, provide them shelter and in return they give nothing back, but disdain or the occasional brush up. Sure there are exceptions to the rule, individual cats being harmed, but when looked in total, they have become the true, dominate species on the planet. One day it will be Cats that go into space, using their human drones to establish the infrastructure and means to propel them out into a galaxy ripe for conquest.

(I have to go, my overlords are coming towards me, pray they don't see what I wrote)