“Little Brother” got me thinking. When the DHS tries to make the city more safe and secure, they just make it worse. Why?
Because they ignore one of the most fundamental principles without which society cannot work: Trust and respect.
That doesn’t mean you need to trust someone completely or respect them in every way. It means: Know how much you can and should trust someone. Then treat them politely, without second thoughts. Surprise: Our brains have been trained for the millions of years before we had speech to read body language. And we’re really good at it.
You don’t have to be nice to a terrorist, bow your head to them or grovel. Not at all. But just imaging how kicking you around, killing your family, relatives, friends, would make you feel.
Now, I imagine that terrorists aren’t exactly lenient or forgiving. So if you would become mad at such a treatment, what will they do? Go on a killing spree? Gee, I think that’s exactly what they do. How surprising.
Which puts us into a delicate position. We can only be safe when we start treating everyone else on the planet with respect. Respect can mean to drive your car for another year, even if it sucks. Or to sell it to someone poor way under price because they deserve it — just as a human. It doesn’t mean we should all convert to the Islam or anything.
It just means that: Show some basic respect (as in polite).
It probably doesn’t mean to go to a poor country, “help” them fight against terrorism and then “suddenly” discover that there are billions of dollars buried in the ground. These people might not have spent a lot of time in school, but they spend an awful lot of time haggling at the bazaar. They see you lie.
Imagine if all the terrorists in the world believed that there were better ways to make them as happy as us. Wouldn’t that be better than strip searches at airports, constant fear of an attack, ever more complicated and even debasing security laws? What’s security without respect?
If we were 100% secure, no one could go anywhere (they might be infected), talk to anyone (they might spill secrets), do anything (they might make mistakes). In computer sciences, you learn early that a secure computer is one which is switched off, without any data or use. Secure but useless.
That’s why security measurements in companies work out so badly: If they were really enforced, the company couldn’t do business anymore. So you have to trust your workers. You have to treat them with respect or else you get the very problems that your dream of “security” pretended to solve.
Posted by digulla 
Dark Views 
When Laziness Gets Expensive
9. May, 2011According to heise online (German, video in English), Professor Dr. Eugene Spafford estimates the costs Sony‘s EPIC FAIL to secure their PSN servers to be 21 billion dollars.
Wow. 21 … fucking … BILLION … dollars. That’s 70’000’000 PS3s. 70 million PS3s. 36 million iPhone 4s. 700’000 cars at $30’000/each. They must be doing pretty well to be able to afford such a loss.
And it’s not that they didn’t see it coming. Sony knew for months that their servers were outdated and missing crucial security patches. Well, someone decided that it wasn’t worth to fix that. So: EPIC FAIL. Again. And again. Will they ever learn?
That feels like the same arrogance which led to the lawsuit against geohot and graf_chokolo. Which probably made someone on the Internet so angry that they decided to give Sony this wedgy. Message to Sony: It’s not smart to be arrogant in the face of overwhelming odds.
You have, say, 1’000 people working to protect your assets. The world has a population of 7 billion (and you just lost 3 dollars to every and each of them) and the probability that one of them can kick you where it really hurts is about 1. At least.
Of course, the company is now using all its power to hunt down the little bastard. Sony, if you read this: Don’t be surprised if a 13-year old kid outwitted your whole security team.
Or rather the manager, who told the team not to fix those servers. But no, managers are never wrong. So the team must be punished. Fire them! All of them! Without supper! Serves them right! And don’t forget to sue the kid! Sue him to hell! Make sure he is not allowed to touch an electronic device ever again. EVER! It’s not your fault what happened! Try to create more DMCA-like laws! So you can sue more people! Get your engineering team to build a time traveling device so you can sue in advance! Force parents to divorce so they can’t breed anything threatening your revenue! Show the world who’s boss! Dictatorships never worked before but that should not stop you! It should rather encourage you! Grow by setting challenging goals!
See where the leads and why you can never win?
Making the world-wide security community hate you even more is your best bet! Trust me, I know at least as well as the guy who created this mess. And you trusted him, didn’t you?
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