R.U. SIRIUS INTERVIEWS BRUCE SCHNEIER ON SECURITY:

I think we should ratchet passenger screening down to pre-9/11 levels. I like seeing positive bag matching. That’s something that was done in Europe for decades. The U.S. airlines screamed and screamed and refused to do it, and now they are.

Really, I would take all the extra money for airport security and have well-trained guards, both uniformed and plainclothes, walking through the airports looking for suspicious people. That’s what I would do. And I would just give back the rest of the money. If we secure our airport and the terrorists go bomb shopping malls, we’ve wasted our money. I dislike security measures that require us to guess the plot correctly because if you guess wrong, it’s a waste of money. And it’s not even a fair game. It’s not like we pick our security, they pick their plot, we see who wins. The game is we pick our security, they look at our security, and then they pick their plot. The way to spend money on security – airport security, and security in general — is intelligence investigation and emergency response. These are the things that will be effective regardless of what the terrorists are planning.

I think that Schneier — who’s an occasional correspondent here — is right about the above, and much else. Read the whole thing.