Why is it that we all - myself included - believe these stories? Why are we so quick to assume that the TSA is a bunch of jack-booted thugs, officious and arbitrary and drunk with power? It's because everything seems so arbitrary, because there's no accountability or transparency in the DHS.

Hardware is easy to protect: lock it in a room, chain it to a desk, or buy a spare. Information poses more of a problem. It can exist in more than one place; be transported halfway across the planet in seconds; and be stolen without your knowledge.

Security is a process, not a product.

A colleague once told me that the world was full of bad security systems designed by people who read Applied Cryptography

The mantra of any good security engineer is: "Security is a not a product, but a process." It's more than designing strong cryptography into a system; it's designing the entire system such that all security measures, including cryptography, work together.

And honestly, if anyone thinks they can get an accurate picture of anyplace on the planet by reading news reports, they're sadly mistaken.

Cryptography products may be declared illegal, but the information will never be