Alan Davison, Director of the Open Technology Institute, has an interesting interview Bruce Schneier about computer security and NSA spying. One of the best moments of this interview is when Davison recounts various problems with governments and private companies trying and failing to secure data. Davison asks Schneier, “Why can’t we protect people online?” and Schneier responds,
The Internet is the most complex machine mankind has ever built. That’s the basic answer. Complexity is the worst enemy of security. Securing complex systems is hard. It just is. And as scientists, we actually don’t know how to build secure computer systems, let a lone a computer system and attach an Internet run by a user, which makes it infinitely worse. These are actually hard problems.
And in our rush to connect everything to the Net, we’ve kind of ignored those hard problems. That was great when the most important thing you did on the Net was discuss Star Trek. It got a lot worse when you started doing banking, and then critical infrastructure. So, this actually isn’t an easy problem.