Schneier on Security

An edited version of this interview will appear in CIO Insight.

I asked security guru Bruce Schneier about those troublesome voting machines and the mindset that foists them upon us.

Schneier: The security of voting machines points to two big issues. The first one is that security is actually very hard. People think technology magically makes security worries a thing of the past, but it’s just not true. Security is very hard and very subtle.

These voting machine companies were no better than any other software, or hardware, computer company we’ve seen in the past few years. They did a really lousy job. And because the systems were proprietary, because the companies had a vested interest in keeping the flaws secret, the public didn’t know about them. So we have this problem of insecure voting machines…