Essays in the Category "National Security Policy"
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Terrorist Threats and Political Gains
Posturing, pontifications, and partisan politics aside, the one clear generalization that emerges from the 9/11 hearings is that information—timely, accurate, and free-flowing—is critical in our nation’s fight against terrorism. Our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies need this information to better defend our nation, and our citizens need this information to better debate massive financial expenditures for anti-terrorist measures, changes in law that aid law enforcement and diminish civil liberties, and the upcoming Presidential election…
A National ID Card Wouldn't Make Us Safer
This essay also appeared, in a slightly different form, in The Mercury News.
As a security technologist, I regularly encounter people who say the United States should adopt a national ID card. How could such a program not make us more secure, they ask?
The suggestion, when it’s made by a thoughtful civic-minded person like Nicholas Kristof (Star-Tribune, March 18), often takes on a tone that is regretful and ambivalent: Yes, indeed, the card would be a minor invasion of our privacy, and undoubtedly it would add to the growing list of interruptions and delays we encounter every day; but we live in dangerous times, we live in a new world … …
America's Flimsy Fortress
Every day, some 82,000 foreign visitors set foot in the US with a visa, and since early this year, most of them have been fingerprinted and photographed in the name of security. But despite the money spent, the inconveniences suffered, and the international ill will caused, these new measures, like most instituted in the wake of September 11, are mostly ineffectual.
Terrorist attacks are very rare. So rare, in fact, that the odds of being the victim of one in an industrialized country are almost nonexistent. And most attacks affect only a few people. The events of September 11 were a statistical anomaly. Even counting the toll they took, 2,978 people in the US died from terrorism in 2001. That same year, 157,400 Americans died of lung cancer, 42,116 in road accidents, and 3,454 from malnutrition…
Slouching Towards Big Brother
Last week the Supreme Court let stand the Justice Department’s right to secretly arrest noncitizen residents.
Combined with the government’s power to designate foreign prisoners of war as “enemy combatants” in order to ignore international treaties regulating their incarceration, and their power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens without charge or access to an attorney, the United States is looking more and more like a police state.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department has asked for, and largely received, additional powers that allow it to perform an unprecedented amount of surveillance of American citizens and visitors. The USA Patriot Act, passed in haste after Sept. 11, started the ball rolling…
Fingerprinting Visitors Won't Offer Security
Imagine that you’re going on vacation to some exotic country.
You get your visa, plan your trip and take a long flight. How would you feel if, at the border, you were photographed and fingerprinted? How would you feel if your biometrics stayed in that country’s computers for years? If your fingerprints could be sent back to your home country? Would you feel welcomed by that country, or would you feel like a criminal?
This month the U.S. government began giving such treatment to an expected 23 million visitors to the United States. The US-VISIT program is designed to capture biometric information at our borders. Only citizens of 27 countries who don’t need a visa to enter the United States, mostly Europeans, are exempt. Currently all 115 international airports and 14 seaports are covered, and over the next three years this program will be expanded to cover at least 50 land crossings and also to screen foreigners exiting the country…
Outside View: Fixing intelligence
A joint congressional intelligence inquiry has concluded that 9/11 could have been prevented if our nation’s intelligence agencies shared information better and coordinated more effectively. This is both a trite platitude and a profound proscription.
Intelligence is easy to understand after the fact. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to draw lines from people in flight school here, to secret meetings in foreign countries there, over to interesting tips from informants, and maybe to INS records. Connecting the dots is child’s play.
Doing it before the fact is another matter entirely and, before 9/11, it wasn’t so easy. There’s a world of difference between intelligence data and intelligence information. Some data did, before the fact, point to 9/11, but it was buried in an enormous amount of irrelevant data leading to blind alleys, false conclusions, and innocent people…
Testimony before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research and Development
Testimony and Statement for the Record of Bruce Schneier
Chief Technical Officer, Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
Hearing on “Overview of the Cyber Problem-A Nation Dependent and Dealing with Risk”
Before the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Science, and Research and Development
Committee on Homeland Security
United States House of Representatives
June 25, 2003
2318 Rayburn House Office Building
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding cybersecurity, particularly in its relation to homeland defense and our nation’s critical infrastructure. My name is Bruce Schneier, and I have worked in the field of computer security for my entire career. I am the author of seven books on the topic, including the best-selling Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World [1]. My newest book is entitled Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World [2], and will be published in September. In 1999, I founded Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., where I hold the position of Chief Technical Officer. Counterpane Internet Security provides real-time security monitoring for hundreds of organizations, including several offices of the federal government…
Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
View or Download in PDF Format
In April 2003, the US Justice Department administratively discharged the FBI of its statutory duty to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. This enormous database contains over 39 million criminal records and information on wanted persons, missing persons, and gang members, as well as information about stolen cars and boats. More than 80,000 law enforcement agencies have access to this database. On average, the database processes 2.8 million transactions each day…
American Cyberspace: Can We Fend off Attackers?
Forget It: Bland PR Document Has Only Recommendations
AT 60 pages, the White House’s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace is an interesting read, but it won’t help to secure cyberspace. It’s a product of consensus, so it doesn’t make any of the hard choices necessary to radically increase cyberspace security. Consensus doesn’t work in security design, and invariably results in bad decisions. It’s the compromises that are harmful, because the more parties you have in the discussion, the more interests there are that conflict with security. Consensus doesn’t work because the one crucial party in these negotiations—the attackers—aren’t sitting around the negotiating table with everyone else. They don’t negotiate, and they won’t abide by any security agreements…
Efforts to Limit Encryption Are Bad for Security
In the wake of the devastating attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), with backing from other high- ranking government officials, quickly seized the opportunity to propose limits on strong encryption and “key-escrow” systems that insure government access. This is a bad move because it will do little to thwart terrorist activities and it will also reduce the security of our critical infrastructure.
As more and more of our nation’s critical infrastructure goes digital, cryptography is more important than ever. We need all the digital security we can get; the government shouldn’t be doing things that actually reduce it. We’ve been through these arguments before, but legislators seem to have short memories. Here’s why trying to limit cryptography is bad for e-business:…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.