Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.

If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security.

It's frustrating; terrorism is rare and largely ineffectual, yet we regularly magnify the effects of both their successes and failures by terrorizing ourselves.

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.

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.

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.

If the FBI parks a van bristling with cameras outside your house, you are justified in closing your blinds.