Friday, September 13, 2013

The real way to deal with the NSA

This is I think the smartest thing I've seen about the whole NSA "Eye of Sauron" thing:
We cannot and should not be living in digital fortresses any more than we are living in physical fortresses at home. Our homes are safe from thieves and from government not because they couldn’t get in if they wanted to but because the law and its enforcement prevents them from doing so. All we have to do is minimal physical security (lock the doors when you are out).


Please repeat after me: Surveillance is a political and legal problem, not a technical problem. We have to all become outraged and start a big and public online and offline campaign to take back the law into the hands of the people and their representatives and away from secret organizations “overseen” by secret courts in a system that goes beyond Kafka’s worst nightmares.

Anything else is completely and utterly futile and the sooner we stop believing in a technological solution the better.
Actually, that's exactly how risk management works.

1 comment:

  1. I think this comment actually said it best:

    Steve Gibson
    "Both you and Schneier are correct. Your "solutions" are not mutually exclusive. Common sense would dictate we do both -- intense political pressure along with making it expensive for them to operate on us will be more effective than either one on its own."

    Where the comment author says the two solutions aren't mutually exclusive, I would argue that they are absolutely dependent on each other if we are to have any success in gaining control over the situation again.

    ReplyDelete

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