Schneier on Security: The Legacy of DES

I had a student post a great link to an Essay, Schneier on Security: The Legacy of DES.

Schneier is a security god with this stuff. This is just one of the great papers he has written! It's so cool to read about people who try and blow the lid off of flawed algorithms used by big industry players, as well as keeping a close eye on government intelligence organizations and actions they might take to limit the public's ability to maintain privacy.

It gets back to the age old debate on privacy versus national security. Obviously terrorist cells and criminals will try to take advantage of a technology that protects them from prying eyes, but does the giving up of some of our civil liberties really mean our security forces get that much closer to these guys? As the years go by I'm becoming more and more cynical about just how some of this information that the government has access to can be misused. It would just take one dark character to access a national database of personal information and we are all in danger of being taken advantage of. A very careful balance has to be struck between convenience and security. I've no idea what the solution is or where that line should be drawn, but it strikes me that people need to keep a very close eye on just how vulnerable they are to identity theft and distribution of private information.