Schneier on Security

We learn to trust strangers from a very young age. Not just uncles, cousins and neighbors, but also teachers, policemen, doctors and even newsreaders on TV. Compared to our ancestors and other animal species, humans have raised trust to unknown heights. Bruce Schneier, in his new book Liars & Outliers, takes us on a tour of how that trust came to be, how it manages to work in the majority of cases and why it doesn’t work in the rest.

Schneier uses Francis Fukuyama’s definition of trust, which holds that other members of society act in a predictable, honest and co-operative way, based on shared norms. This is enormously helpful for society as a whole, because there are costs and risks involved in dealing with others and establishing their trustworthiness. If society can organize itself so that we can safely trust other members, that saves us a lot of time and money…

I criticized Bruce Schneier for the poor handling of his “trust experiment” with regard to his latest book, Liars & Outliers. I have now read it, thus perhaps putting me back into his good graces.

I’m a fan of Bruce Schneier. I’ve followed his blog for years, and I enjoy his moderate and practical approach to various security issues. So when he offered signed copies of his latest book at a discounted price in exchange for a review, I jumped at the opportunity.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this book. Perhaps because I’m already familiar, and agree, with many of his ideas, I didn’t find too many surprising ideas here. Nonetheless, Schneier does a great job of laying out a broad, fairly consistent framework for looking at how people cooperate and, if the title is meant to indicate a theme, “defect” from various forms of pressure meant to induce that cooperation…

Recently, Bruce Schneier offered a discounted copy of his latest book “Liars and Outliers” in exchange for a review. Because I am a fan of his, I jumped at the opportunity. Bruce is known for is work in the field of cryptography, but cryptography systems have improved to the point that they often are no longer the weak link in the system. People are. Because of this, he has been studying psychology and human behavior. Liars and Outliers is the latest of his books in this area.

Right off the bat, this book opens with a revelation.

Just today, a stranger came to my door claiming he was here to unclog a bathroom drain. I let him into my house without verifying his identity, and not only did he repair the drain, he also took off his shoes so he wouldn’t track mud on my floors. When he was done, I gave him a piece of paper that asked my bank to give him some money. He accepted it without a second glance. At no point did he attempt to take my possessions, and at no point did I attempt the same of him. In fact, neither of us worried that the other would. My wife was also home, but it never occurred to me that he was a sexual rival and I should therefore kill him…

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really informative look at what helps members of society act rationally and allows society to function. Schneier explains many of the common models of trust that exist at different layers of society and provides examples of each. I would have preferred to have the examples be a little more in depth and most of them were covered at a very high level. I guess that would make this a good jumping off point to other books which go in depth on any of the failures mentioned in the book. Overall I really enjoyed the book it was a very easy read and I recommend it…

I swear I didn’t read sidebernie‘s latest before I decided to post this….  Actually what happened was I got a deeply discounted and autographed book some time ago on the condition that I post a review about it somewhere.  And it’s been nagging at me (partly due to the fact that I left the book out on my desk to remind me and I keep knocking it off—oops, sorry) and I finally got some time, so here goes.  Hope there’s more than two of us here, or it won’t be very much publicity for the author!  Anyway….

I first discovered Bruce Schneier when I got interested in mathematical cryptography, with his book “Applied Cryptography”.  When that book came out and for many years afterwards, it was *the* book to read if you wanted to know how cryptography works.  Although Schneier is still considered an expert on the technical side of cryptography and is still designing ciphers, he has gradually broadened his attention over the years, first into computer security as a whole, then into security against terrorism, and most recently into security in general.  His most recent book, …

One of the perils of buying a book written by a blogger one reads regularly is that the book may be little more than a rehashing of their blog, with insufficient original material to warrant the time investment. Sometimes it’s still nice to support them financially, but it may not make sense to read the book. I’ve been following Schneier’s blog for years (as should anyone with an interest in security), including through the entire process of writing Liars and Outliers, and was a bit worried that might be the case here. Thankfully, I can reassure any other worried potential readers that is not the case. This is substantial new material establishing a firm framework for thinking about incentives and controls in any society or organization…