Bruce Schneier: 'The Internet Era of Fun and Games Is Over'
> When it didn’t matter—when it was Facebook, when it was Twitter, when it was email—it was OK to let programmers, to give them the special right to code the world as they saw fit. We were able to do that. But now that it’s the world of dangerous things—and it’s cars and planes and medical devices and everything else—maybe we can’t do that anymore.Mark this mindset as the beginning of the end of the open, inclusive programming world as we know it.Schnier visited RIT (my alma mater) last spring, and his presentation revolved around the threat presented by IoT and the growing need for national legislation to encumber it. I asked him a pointed question about how this scaled to the _international_ level, which he decided mostly not to answer (focus on domestic policy first, and such). Because the answer is simple: _it doesn't_. Without global collaboration, this philosophy is the beginning of national internet feifdoms - moreso than what exists today - and the beginning of the end of the global collaboration we freely enjoy today. I value this freedom a lot.I respect Mr. Schneier for his poignant responses to popular security issues and his ability to be a public face for computer security, but I strongly disagree with where he's lobbying we take the future to. Maybe I just can't accept the hard reality that "security isn't easy" and that government regulation is the only way to force security on people.