J.R.McHale

Cyber Law, Tech and Policy

• How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?: Richard Stallman at Wired. Also recently by Stallman: Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before.

• Want to Evade NSA Spying? Don’t Connect to the Internet: Bruce Schneier at Wired. Key takeaway: it’s hard to avoid the NSA (or, perhaps more accurately, it’s very, very inconvenient).

• Special Report: The Obama Administration and the Press – Leak Investigations and Surveillance in post-9/11 America: CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists).

Time to Tame the NSA Behemoth Trampling our Rights by Yochai Benkler at The Guardian.

The Secret FISA Court Must Go by law professors Christopher Sprigman and Jennifer Granick at The Daily Beast.

The U.S. Government has Betrayed the Internet – We Need to Take it Back by Bruce Schneier at The Guardian.

Bruce Schneier and Jonathan Zittrain at The Berkman Center (video: one hour, thirty minutes).

Attackers generally benefit from new security technologies before defenders do … They have a first-mover advantage. They’re more nimble and adaptable than defensive institutions … They can evolve faster. And entropy is on their side — it’s easier to destroy something than it is to prevent, defend against, or recover from that destruction. For the most part, though, society still wins. The bad guys simply can’t do enough damage to destroy the underlying social system. The question for us is: can society still maintain security as technology becomes more advanced?

I don’t think it can.