Encryption Expert Teaches Security

Bruce Schneier poses in the living room of his south Minneapolis home, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006, where he says he works from his sofa. Schneier, a computer encryption expert turned all-purpose security guru, describes his life as surreal. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt) (Ann Heisenfelt - AP)

MINNEAPOLIS -- It must say something about our times that Bruce Schneier, a geeky computer encryption expert turned all-purpose security guru, occasionally gets recognized in public. "My life is just plain surreal," he says.

Schneier, 43, has made it so by popping up whenever technology and regular life intersect, weighing in on everything from the uselessness of post-Sept. 11 airport security measures to the perils of electronic voting machines and new passports with radio chips.

He does it by writing books, essays, a frequently updated Web log and an e-mail newsletter with 125,000 subscribers. It helps that he has never met a reporter whose phone calls he will not return. "I'm a media slut," he admits.

That might make it tempting to dismiss the bearded, ponytailed Schneier as being in the business of promoting Schneier. Of course there's some of that _ he has a program "ego-scan" his book-sales ranking on Amazon.com every hour.

But that doesn't detract from the respect he engenders.

A former Pentagon and Bell Labs technologist who invented important methods of cryptography and wrote a textbook on the subject (meriting him a mention in "The Da Vinci Code"), Schneier has testified to Congress and shared ideas with Rand Corp. researchers. Even though he has denigrated the billions spent on airport security as almost entirely wasted, the Transportation Security Administration asked him for advice about its passenger-screening program.

"Bruce Schneier is a master of explaining security, and a master of telling us why security and freedom are the same thing, why security can't ever be had at freedom's expense," says Cory Doctorow, an author and fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Schneier sees himself as a teacher dispensing clear-headed lessons in an era poisoned by irrational fears of terrorism. "I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute," he wrote in a recent online essay.

His favorite topic these days is the intersection of security, economics and psychology.

For example, Schneier blasts almost all airport screening measures as meaningless "security theater" that makes people incorrectly believe they are safer. After all, who says the next terrorist attack will involve the methods used last time? Who says it even has to involve airplanes?

"The game of having all these tactics is one we can't win because terrorists get to see it in advance," he says. "By definition you're going to pick a plot we're not going to catch. It's a game we can't win. Let's stop playing it."

Instead, Schneier says the game ought to be about stopping bad people _ mainly through better intelligence and police work. That money would be much better spent, he says, than making sure security screeners confiscate corkscrews or any other particular item from passengers.