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The data we collect is strictly anonymous, unless you’ve been kind enough to give us your name, email address, or other identifying information. And even if you have been that kind, we promise we won’t sell that information to anyone else, unless of course our impossibly obtuse privacy policy says otherwise and/or we change our minds tomorrow.
There’s a lot more.
From Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center:
Ultimately, Leiter said, it’ll be the “quiet, confident resilience” of Americans after a terrorist attack that will “illustrate ultimately the futility of terrorism.” That doesn’t mean not to hit back: Leiter quickly added that “we will hold those accountable [and] we will be ready to respond to those attacks.” But it does mean recognizing, he said, that “we help define the success of an attack by our reaction to that attack.”
Sure, I’ve been saying this since forever. But I think this is the most senior government person who has said this.
EDITED TO ADD (12/8): There are enough essays with this sentiment that I’m going to stop blogging about it. Here’s what I have saved up.
Roger Cohen, “The Real Threat to America“:
So I give thanks this week for the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
I give thanks for Benjamin Franklin’s words after the 1787 Constitutional Convention describing the results of its deliberations: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
To keep it, push back against enhanced patting, Chertoff’s naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear.
Christopher Hitchens, Don’t Be an Ass About Airport Security.”
Tom Engelhardt, “The National Security State Cops a Feel.”
Evan DeFilippis, “A Nude Awakening—TSA and Privacy“:
If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA´s newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA´s regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.
EDITED TO ADD (12/8): Also, this great comic.
I sure hope this is a parody:
SnapScouts Keep America Safe!
Want to earn tons of cool badges and prizes while competing with you friends to see who can be the best American? Download the SnapScouts app for your Android phone (iPhone app coming soon) and get started patrolling your neighborhood.
It’s up to you to keep America safe! If you see something suspicious, Snap it! If you see someone who doesn’t belong, Snap it! Not sure if someone or something is suspicious? Snap it anyway!
Play with your friends and family to see who can get the best prizes. Join the SnapScouts today!
This is funny:
The world has been placed on a heightened security alert following reports that New Age terrorists have harnessed the power of homeopathy for evil. “Homeopathic weapons represent a major threat to world peace,” said President Barack Obama, “they might not cause any actual damage but the placebo effect could be quite devastating.”
[…]
Homeopathic bombs are comprised of 99.9% water but contain the merest trace element of explosive. The solution is then repeatedly diluted so as to leave only the memory of the explosive in the water molecules. According to the laws of homeopathy, the more that the water is diluted, the more powerful the bomb becomes.
[…]
“A homeopathic attack could bring entire cities to a standstill,” said BBC Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner. “Large numbers of people could easily become convinced that they have been killed and hospitals would be unable to cope with the massive influx of the ‘walking suggestible.'”
It’s a little too close to reality, though.
Interesting research:
Analysing our data for security, though, shows that essentially all human-generated names provide poor resistance to guessing. For an attacker looking to make three guesses per personal knowledge question (for example, because this triggers an account lock-down), none of the name distributions we looked at gave more than 8 bits of effective security except for full names. That is, about at least 1 in 256 guesses would be successful, and 1 in 84 accounts compromised. For an attacker who can make more than 3 guesses and wants to break into 50% of available accounts, no distributions gave more than about 12 bits of effective security. The actual values vary in some interesting ways-South Korean names are much easier to guess than American ones, female first names are harder than male ones, pet names are slightly harder than human names, and names are getting harder to guess over time.
I’ve written about this problem.
EDITED TO ADD (4/13): xkcd on the secret question.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data, search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed apology to its millions of users Monday.
“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some privacy concerns as of late, and judging by some of the search terms we’ve seen, along with the tens of thousands of personal e-mail exchanges and Google Chat conversations we’ve carefully examined, it looks as though it might be a while before we regain your trust.”
Google expressed regret to some of its third-generation Irish-American users on Smithwood between Barlow and Lake.
Added Schmidt, “Whether you’re Michael Paulson who lives at 3425 Longview Terrace and makes $86,400 a year, or Jessica Goldblatt from Lynnwood, WA, who already has well-established trust issues, we at Google would just like to say how very, truly sorry we are.”
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.