At CNN, Boing Boing pal and security researcher Bruce Schneier and Harvard media professor Nick Couldry write about acedia, "a malady that apparently plagued many Medieval monks. It's a sense of no longer caring about caring, not because one had become apathetic, but because somehow the whole structure of care had become jammed up." — Read the rest

Law school grads routinely go to work for crusading nonprofits and even those in private practice do pro bono work, thanks to a widespread understanding that lawyers have a professional duty to work for the public interest — after all, understanding and navigating the law is a necessary precondition for freedom and fairness.

1. Fight the fights (against more government and commercial surveillance; backdoors, government hacking); 2. Prepare for those fights (push companies to delete those logs; remind everyone that security and privacy can peacefully co-exist); 3. Lay the groundword for a better future (figure out non-surveillance internet business models, privacy-respecting law enforcement, and limits on corporate surveillance); 4. — Read the rest

Bruce Schneier warns us that the Internet of Things security dumpster-fire isn't just bad laptop security for thermostats: rather, that "software control" (of an ever-widening pool of technologies); interconnections; and autonomy (systems designed to act without human intervention, often responding faster than humans possibly could) creates an urgency over security questions that presents an urgent threat the like of which we've never seen.

No one explains security, privacy, crypto and safety better.

Joly sez, "After Glenn Greenwald first received his stash of secret documents from Edward Snowden, one of the first people he consulted was security expert, cryptographer, and writer Bruce Schneier, who helped him review and digest the documents. A few weeks back we saw Bruce give a briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, where he advised lawmakers to rein in the NSA, and the Internet community to pro-actively design countermeasures. — Read the rest

James writes, "Following on Eben Moglen's mind-warping series of talks about life after Snowden, the Software Freedom Law Center has invited Bruce Schneier to join Eben for a conversation informed by Bruce's own analysis of the leaked documents. Bruce is one of the smartest thinkers around when it comes to understanding how security and surveillance operate in the real world. — Read the rest

Bruce Schneier's TEDxCambridge talk "The Battle for Power on the Internet" is a fascinating analysis of how networks have magnified, in turn, the power of individuals, then companies, then governments. Importantly, it neither dismisses the Internet as insignificant in the service of fair and free societies, nor does it presume that the Internet automatically makes the world better. — Read the rest

Security guru Bruce Schneier has posted a typically pragmatic and passionate overview of why you can, and should, follow practices that improve your odds of being able to communicate privately in the face of the NSA's vast surveillance programs.

"I understand that most of this is impossible for the typical internet user," he admits, and even Schneier doesn't use "all these tools for most everything I am working on." — Read the rest

Brian Krebs is conducting a series of interviews with computer experts on how they got into the field and what they'd advise others to do if they want to break in themselves. The first one, an interview with Thomas Ptacek, ran last month. — Read the rest

Sam Harris, a neuroscientist, challenged Bruce Schneier to a debate on whether Muslims should be singled out for additional screening at airports. Schneier patiently, and repeatedly, explains why (apart from the unconstitutionality and moral repugnance of this), it would be bad security practice. — Read the rest

As the Economist's debate between Bruce Schneier and former TSA boss Kip Hawley draws to a close, it's clear that Schneier has crushed Hawley. All of Hawley's best arguments sum up to "Someone somewhere did something bad, and if he'd tried it on us, we would have caught him." — Read the rest

Bruce Schneier was invited to testify about the TSA to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but at the last minute he was disinvited, after the TSA objected to having him in the room.

On Friday, at the request of the TSA, I was removed from the witness list.

The Economist is hosting a debate between Bruce Schneier and former TSA honcho Kip Hawley, on the proposition "This house believes that changes made to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good." I'm admittedly biased for Bruce's position (he's for the proposition), but it seems to me that no matter what your bias, Schneier totally crushed Hawley in the opening volley. — Read the rest

John Scalzi's Big Idea introduces Bruce Schneier's excellent new book Liars and Outliers, and interviews Schneier on the work that went into it. I read an early draft of the book and supplied a quote: "Brilliantly dissects, classifies, and orders the social dimension of security-a spectacularly palatable tonic against today's incoherent and dangerous flailing in the face of threats from terrorism to financial fraud." — Read the rest

Vanity Fair's Charles C. Mann walked through Reagan International Airport with Bruce Schneier, noting all the ways in which "security" adds expense and inconvenience without making us safer. By the end of the trip, he concluded:

To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak.

The NYT asked Bruce Schneier what to do about terrorist attacks like the failed Times Square car-bomb. I really like his response (unsurprisingly!).

Think about the security measures commonly proposed. Cameras won't help. They don't prevent terrorist attacks, and their forensic value after the fact is minimal.

Bruce Schneier is holding a TSA logo-redesign contest, inspired by Patrick "Ask the Pilot" Smith's suggestion, "a revised eagle, its talons clutching a box cutter and a toothpaste tube. It says 'Transportation Security Administration' around the top. Below are the three simple words of the TSA mission statement: 'Tedium, Weakness, Farce'". — Read the rest

Spotted on Bruce Schneier's blog, a note that the Vatican has acknowledged that "it was not realistic to think the Vatican could ensure 100% security for the Pope and that security guards appeared to have acted as quickly as possible… zero risk cannot be achieved." — Read the rest

Michael from the Open Rights Group sez, "Open Rights Group has lined up Bruce Schneier for its next fundraiser event on Friday 4 December. The title is 'The Future of Privacy: Rethinking Security Trade-offs' and he'll be explaining why data is the pollution problem of the information age and how we should deal with it." — Read the rest