Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier’s Data and Goliath delves into the complexities of modern surveillance with remarkable clarity. From my perspective as a cybersecurity and privacy expert, Schneier’s examination of data collection and its ramifications is particularly engaging. He insightfully addresses how personal data can be exploited, compromising both individual freedom and privacy. This book is crucial for grasping the evolving power dynamics between individuals and institutions in our digital era. show more Schneier’s research is not only accessible but also profoundly relevant, making it a must-read for anyone invested in understanding and safeguarding their own privacy and security. show less

Last week, in my typically dingbat fashion, I managed to lose my short-term airport parking ticket. In the old days, I would’ve had to pay a full day’s parking fee for my oversight. This time, the attendant extracted my exact entry time in their database because the system imaged my license plate and stored my data. These are the sorts of conveniences we enjoy in the age of Big Data, but the tradeoff is that everyone everywhere has our data, forever — and there’s nothing we can do show more about it.

Schneier, a professional cryptologist and security consultant, does a great job of explaining in plain English just how thoroughly our lives are penetrated by intrusive mass surveillance. Whether it’s corporations who know us better than we know ourselves or governments listening to everything and everyone, we regularly trade away our privacy for convenience and the illusion of security.

Schneier is not a prophet of technological doom. He believes there’s a middle way that allows us to reap the undeniable benefits of Big Data to improve the human condition, while not mortgaging our privacy to faceless corps and govs that don’t have our best interests at heart. Whether or not we find Schneier’s way, though, this book is helpful toward becoming a little more aware as we conduct ourselves in an age when everyone’s watching and listening, and everything we do lasts forever. show less

Bruce Schneier lives in a very different world. His specialty has long been IT security, and he has drilled so deep, no one can compare. This book is about trust and security, using history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and especially philosophy, to trace their development and deployment. He not only divines the if, but the how and when that people, and their societies, confer trust. He slices and dices his topic in every conceivable way. It is a fascinating process to watch.

And yet, show more it doesn't always ring true. Schneier spends many pages extolling the virtues of society and how an optimal mix of co-operative elements keeps the liars, cheaters and criminals in check. There are whole chapters on societal, moral and reputational pressures. But we have only to look to our own reality to see it isn't so.

At the corporate level, for example, individual companies do not always work to keep the bad seeds out. Entire industries are crooked, criminal affairs that exist purely to suck the lifeblood out of their customers. There isn't a bank in the United States that we can take pride in. They don't talk about customer loyalty; they plot lock-in. They are universally loathed and despised, and they continue to treat their customers worse and worse, to reinforce it. Airlines should be prosecuted for the obvious collusion in the bizarre fee structures, penalties and restrictions they all magically decided to impose on the public a few years back. Health insurers have one overriding goal - to deny health services to their customers and let them fight to get reimbursed. There isn't one of them anyone loves. If they all disappeared tomorrow, no one would mourn for the good old days.

There isn't one participant in any of these entire industries that we trust. There isn't one participant in these industries who take your side or come to your defense. We don't trust them to do what they say, we don't trust them to be honest and forthright, and we don't trust them with our personal data. We don't trust entire sectors of the economy. We have zero faith in any of them. And that goes for every level of government, too, whether it's $100,000 in pork to a brother-in-law, to selling the entire state to gas frackers. The NYPD is seen as an army of occupation. Congress rates well below used car salesmen in confidence and trust.

That's not how Schneier describes it. So by page 100 I was looking at Liars and Outliers differently.

Meanwhile, the book races through internet security and the false confidence everyone has in posting personal photos and messages. Schneier rightly points out there can be too much security, and cutting our trillion dollar security expenditure in half will not double our risk for terrorism. We are not safer for that level of spending, he says, and spending ten times as much will not make us ten times safer.

Another excellent chapter, Institutions, uses the TSA as model of conflicting needs and perceptions to describe how this one agency performs its mandate. Schneier was was on the plaintiffs' bench when TSA, reacting to the underwear bomber, suddenly and massively deployed full body scanners, which among other faults, could not detect an underwear bomb. Pointless security, at huge expense. A poster child for this book.

In conclusion Schneier point out comprehensively that we constantly look in the wrong place, overreact to squeaky wheels and ignore the smaller problems that can have greater impact. Doesn't matter that more Americans die from exposure to peanuts than to terrorists that we spend trillions on terrorists and nothing on allergies.

The prognosis is for more of the same; it's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Schneier lays out the parameters for making it work better. But we all know, plus ca change..... show less

A fascinating account of the way in which corporations are invading our privacy for profit at the same time governments are doing so for poorly founded security concerns. Both groups tend to see privacy and prohibitions against unreasonable search, and seizure as outmoded and even dangerous values. Schneier's well researched book documents shocking and insidious assaults on privacy on almost every page. Reading these specific incidents gives the reader a much deeper understanding of the show more problem than the more vague and global perspective from the mainstream media, even after the specificity of the Snowden revelations. Also helpful are the concrete methods individuals can use to defend themselves, though these are constantly changing due to new technologies such as facial recognition. show less