The delusion of security

A mammoth database system is hiding in the immigration bill.

Wouldn’t you know it?

News about the proposed The Employee Eligibility Verification System:

As well as merging Internal Revenue Service databases, employers would be required to submit information for all of the American work force to Homeland Security – data on roughly 150 million people in one overarching agency. [story]

Harper’s Law:
Security and privacy risks increase proportionally to the square of the number of users of the data.

“The government definitely seems to have two consistent problems—one is bad data getting into the database … and the other is getting bad data out of the database,” said John Pescatore, an analyst for Gartner.

Homeland Security promotes security policy that too often is merely scratching an itch.

If you want to do something that makes security sense, figure out what’s common among a bunch of rare events, and concentrate your countermeasures there. Ignore the movie-plot threats, and concentrate on the real risks. Bruce Schneier

Home of the Petrified
The sons and daughters of the nation that stood up to Hitler and Tojo now file through airport security barefoot…. Bernard Chazelle

Hethen slaye yow;
Ovens are hotte;
Inquisitores flaye yow;
And plague-sik haue snotte.
Abbesses growe fatter;
Prechours moote wirche,
Pilgrims oft chatter:
Wall me in a chirche!
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