The Transcript Of A Talk By Bruce Schneier

This is a blog about security. And related topics. And sometimes totally unrelated topics.

Below is parts of the transcript of a talk by Bruce Schneier, US security expert, that was presented

Security is two different things: it’s a feeling, and it’s a reality. Even when you are not secure, you may feel you are. The reverse is also true.

Security is a trade-off - you trade off something for security. On a personal level a burglar alarm at home or on a national level to invade a foreign country, both demand trade-offs – money, time, convenience, image, and so on.

The important question regarding security, therefore, is not whether it makes us safer, but whether it is worth the trade-off.

We make such trade-offs every day, often without noticing. They are just part of living. Not

• view the unknown as riskier than the familiar (kidnapping vs car accident)

• view personified risks as greater than anonymous risks (Bin Laden was scarier because he had a name)

• underestimate risks in situations we do control and overestimate them in situations we don’t (smoking vs a car hijacking)

These and other such biases act as filters between us and reality, often with the result that feeling and reality become out of sync. You now either have a false sense of security or a false sense of insecurity.

So how do you make people feel secure? You can a) make people actually secure and hope they notice, or you b) can make people feel secure and hope they don’t notice.

We all have different models that drives our views on security, models we get from religion, school, family, the media and others. (A soldier in a war zone has very complex models of how to survive. It depends on the type of attack, the type of weaponry used, where the nearest cover is and the level of support he can rely on. Your model of survival in say, Waterkloof in Pretoria would be significantly