New Scientist: Spy planes feed satellite, unencrypted. Think of it as a new field for those who like to play with police scanners. (Link from Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram.)

Quoth den Beste: Perfect safety is impossible; cope.

Bruce Schneier:

My opinion has been that it is largely unnecessary to trade civil liberties for security, and that the best security measures — reinforcing the airplane cockpit door, putting barricades and guards around important buildings, improving authentication for telephone and Internet banking — have no effect on civil liberties. Broad surveillance is a mark of bad security.

David Kopel: Does God Believe in Gun Control?

Darth Vader’s War on Terror.

Security can be more about power trips than safe travel. Hooray, we cranks are not alone in saying it. (Link from Monty Solomon.)

What Went Wrong, an article about last summer’s Intelligence failure. (Old link dead; two new links)

“If I were an average citizen, I’d be pissed at the whole American government,” says a senior official who has worked on counterterrorism.

I usually am anyway, of course, so I can’t tell the difference.