Will We Fiddle while the Internet Burns?

You would think that after all the problems we’ve had with security since 9/11, and the continuing abject failure of the Bush administration to even start to address our exposure to various kinds of terrorists, you’ld think it would be a no-brainer to appoint somebody to DHS’s Cyber Security post who actually had experience in [...]

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And the Government loses data yet again

Our government, which is supposedly protecting us from the ravages of cyber-terrorists, can't even protect its own data on us from casual hacking (from the AP):
A hacker broke into the Agriculture Department's computer system and may have obtained names, Social Security numbers and photos of 26,000 Washington-area employees and contractors, the department said Wednesday [...]

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Yet Another Laptop Stolen, Thanks ING . . .

Will it never end? Will these fools never actually learn? Will ING, the huge insurance and financial services corporation never learn? This is, after all, their third data loss this year. In case you missed the news, click here, read it, and weep. There is less than no excuse for [...]

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Ages of the Internet, Part 2: Coevolution

Humans and our technology generally form a kind of ecosystem: we create a technology, then the technology enables different behaviors in us, we change the technology, and it changes us right back. This has been true since the stone age and its just as true today.
Our technology du jour is the Internet and it [...]

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Privacy and Personal Cryptography

As the Administration continues to demand more and more personal data from wiretaps, phone records, and the like, I quote from Bruce Schneier in a recent essay:
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under [...]

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