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

Bruce Schneier's Foreign Policy essay in 5G security argues that we're unduly focused on the possibility of Chinese manufacturers inserting backdoors or killswitches in 5G equipment, and not focused enough on intrinsic weakness in a badly defined, badly developed standard wherein "near-term corporate profits prevailed against broader social good."

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.

Bruce Schneier (previously) has spent literal decades as part of the vanguard of the movement to get policy makers to take internet security seriously: to actually try to make devices and services secure, and to resist the temptation to blow holes in their security in order to spy on "bad guys." In Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, Schneier makes a desperate, impassioned plea for sensible action, painting a picture of a world balanced on the point of no return.

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.

Bruce Schneier weighs in on last week's ridiculous UK government talking points memo that Murdoch's Sunday Times dutifully published as front-page news.

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

What we do know, the security researcher says, is that it is an extreme example of corporate hacking. And it won't be the last.

Michael writes, "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Future Tense hosted a panel discussion on post-USA/NSA controlled Internet possibilities.

The United States has signalled its willingness to give up its unofficial stewardship role of the Internet. Who should take over, and who will?"

The big New York Times scoop about the alleged theft of more than a billion usernames and passwords smells fishy to security expert Bruce Schneier.

Writing in the Atlantic, Bruce Schneier explains the NSA's insane program of creating, discovering and hoarding vulnerabilities in computer systems in order to weaponize them. These vulnerabilities allow the NSA to attack its enemies (everyone), but let other states, hackers, and crooks attack Americans. — Read the rest

Congress has grown so weary of the NSA's duck-and-weave routine when asked to explain its spying that yesterday, six members of Congress called in Bruce Schneier to give it the answers that the NSA can't or won't give. Schneier, who's seen some of the Snowden leaks, called the meeting "surreal" and "extremely freaky."

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

One year ago today

Knuckles that promote literacy: Spotted today at a Toronto restaurant: a great, pro-literacy set of knuckle-tatts.

Five years ago today

Bruce Schneier's election night analysis: Dissect the exit polls, debate statistics, ridicule pundits, advance theories, and–hopefully–repeatedly celebrate. — 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

Internet security expert Bruce Schneier writes about Lavabit founder Ladar Levison's "extreme moral act in the face of government pressure," in closing the security-focused email service rather than complying with a US government order to share user data. "It's what happened next that is the most chilling. — Read the rest

Bruce Schneier has advice for America's tech companies: when the NSA comes to you and asks you to spy on your users, say NO. They'll promise you that no one will ever find out that you were helping them break the law, but they can't keep that promise. — Read the rest