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October 22, 2003
Keep a Close Watch on Ex-Servicemen
Posted by Ernest Miller
Bruce Scheier, one of the world's leading cryptography and security experts, has an op-ed on Newsday.com pointing out the foibles of mass terrorist screening at airports and the like (Terror Profiles By Computers Are Ineffective). As an ex-military type myself, the example he used of bogus screening criteria hits close to home:
I have an idea. Timothy McVeigh and John Allen Muhammad - one of the accused D.C. snipers - both served in the military. I think we need to put all U.S. ex-servicemen on a special watch list, because they obviously could be terrorists. I think we should flag them for "special screening" when they fly and think twice before allowing them to take scuba-diving lessons.
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Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. Dan Fingerman on October 22, 2003 10:24 PM writes...
Schneier's argument is bolstered by the simple, elegant, and compelling mathematical analysis done by Temple University mathematician John Allen Paulos, in the January 2003 installment of his column "Who's Counting?." The article, "Future World: Privacy, Terrorists, and Science Fiction," (http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/WhosCounting/whoscounting030105.html) assumes that a project such as the recently de-funded Terrorist Information Awareness program (née "Total Information Awareness"), has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its founders by 2054, the year when the film Minority Report is set. This hypothetical program has a predictive success rate of 99%. Examining this number and assuming that the U.S. has 300 million citizens, Paulos proves that it would imprison just under 1,000 terrorists and just under 3 million innocent people.
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