from http://www.itconversations.com/transcri ... 19-10.htmlBruce Scheier wrote:Bruce Schneier: Yeah, I’m often asked by the press, by legislators, “What do you recommend?” because I spend a lot of time saying, “This won’t work, that won’t work, or this won’t work.”
And they always ask, “Well, what will work? What should we do?”
And I think we just spend money at either end of the spectrum. The money we spend on intelligence, investigation, going after the terrorists will work regardless of what their next plan is. Defending the airlines only works if their next plan involves airlines, but going after the terrorists works regardless of what their next plan is, and I think, that’s important.
So I am very much in favor of those sorts of things: hiring linguists at the FBI, getting investigative teams in place, tracking terrorist funding, interdicting communications, that stuff also works.
And then I also advocate stuff at the back end, emergency response, first response, whether it is police, fire, medical, spending money there helps us, again, regardless of what the terrorist plans are.
We can never anticipate the terrorist plans. Inasmuch as we do, they will change them, so by definition you can’t anticipate them. We can’t all say, “My God! They’re are going to attack the rail system! Let’s secure the rail system,” because then they’ll decide to attack something else.
This beautifully sums up exactly what I think about terrorism and the preventing thereof. The Patriot Act eliminates our constitutional rights as Americans while doing nothing to reduce the threat of terrorism. Bush is spending money to fund wars and missle defense systems and spending political will to extend the Patriot Act. This is why President George W. Bush is soft on terrorism. He is not heading terrorism off at the pass; he is ignoring the symptoms and ignoring the causes and concentrating on all his efforts on prophylactics that just won't work. Bush's policies are like investing in face masks to protect people from SARS while everyone is dying of AIDS.