PROTECTING YOU FROM YOURSELF….Security expert Bruce Schneier recently sent me a copy of his new book, Beyond Fear, no doubt hoping I would review it on my site and thus send it rocketing onto the bestseller list. No luck on that, since I haven’t finished it yet, but I just have to share this paragraph about cell phone “security”:
Nokia spends about a hundred times more money per phone on battery security than on communications security. The security system senses when a consumer uses a third-party battery and switches the phone into maximum power-consumption mode; the point is to ensure that consumers buy only Nokia batteries.
Don’t you just love that? And what kind of pseudoscience doubletalk do you suppose they trot out to explain this policy?
Anyway, I don’t know yet if the book is any good, but this anecdote itself has been worth the price.
UPDATE: OK, one more excerpt:
Did you ever wonder why tweezers were confiscated at security checkpoints, but matches and cigarette lighters ? actual combustible materials ? were not? It’s because the tobacco lobby interjected its agenda into the negotiations by pressuring the government. If the tweezers lobby had more power, I’m sure they would have been allowed on board, as well.
I don’t know about the book as a whole yet, but the anecdotes are pretty good so far.
