An Open Society?
Eric Rescorla discusses this account:
Officer Primiano expressed extreme frustration with me as soon as I began speaking of my rights to photograph in public places. She wanted to debate the wisdom of my taking pictures and asserted that in the wake of the Sept 11th attacks on our country, I should be more interested in aiding officials in their efforts to increase security than my rights as a citizen or journalist.
Peter Swire is thinking about these issues; he mentioned a very similar case to me recently. I’m encouraging him to write a mass market book on the questions and tradeoffs, because I’m impressed with the work he’s already done on disclosure, which I discussed in Swire on Disclosure.
Adam: Much thanks for asking your readers to get in touch with me if they have other anecdotes/thoughts on when openness helps or hurts security. In this high-spam world, it would help a lot if the subject line said something like “Shostack reader” or “security/obscurity” so that I am certain to read the email.
My paper on the subject is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=531782
Best,
Peter