[NetBehaviour] Security at What Cost?

[Bernard Roddy]

Hi all, I'm new on this list.  I had read Marc's
interview with Verschooren and looked up a list for
network art.  If there's some place to learn more
about this list, I'd be interested.  

In the meantime, I'd like to toss of a comment about
the article forwarded here.  Since the early 19th
century some form of the id card has been in the
making and will continue to preoccupy diverse segments
of society.  Photography quickly became a means of
collecting visual data and assessing various risk
populations.  It is only to be expected that digital
means replace mechanical ones.  Security has also long
been an easy means of persuading people to submit to a
disciplining regimen and to acquiesce in the
collection of data about minority groups.  What we
need to think about are the ways in which individuals
manage to subvert or evade this process.  

Bernie



--- marc garrett <marc.garrett at furtherfield.org>
wrote:

> Bruce Schneier: Security at What Cost?
> 
> National ID System Is Not Worth The $23 Billion
> Price Tag.
> 
> he argument was so obvious it hardly needed
> repeating: We would all be 
> safer if we had a better ID card. A good,
> hard-to-forge national ID is a 
> no-brainer (or so the argument goes), and it's
> ridiculous that a modern 
> country such as the United States doesn't have one.
> One result of this 
> line of thinking is the planned Real ID Act, which
> forces all states to 
> conform to common and more stringent rules for
> issuing driver's licenses.
> 
> But security is always a tradeoff; it must be
> balanced with the cost. We 
> all do this intuitively. Few of us walk around
> wearing bulletproof 
> vests. It's not because they're ineffective, it's
> because for most of 
> us, the tradeoff isn't worth it. It's not worth the
> cost, the 
> inconvenience, or the loss of fashion sense.
> 
> According to the Department of Homeland Security's
> own estimates, Real 
> ID will cost Americans around $23 billion. So is
> this a good tradeoff 
> for us -- are the security benefits worth the price
> tag?
> 
> When most people think of ID cards, they think of a
> small plastic card 
> with their name and photograph. This isn't wrong,
> but it's only a small 
> piece of any ID program. What starts out as a
> seemingly simple security 
> device -- a card that binds a photograph with a name
> -- rapidly becomes 
> a complex security system.
> 
> http://www.schneier.com/essay-207.html
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