Recommended:

####Cyber Law, Tech and Policy

+ [How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/a-necessary-evil-what-it-takes-for-democracy-to-survive-surveillance/): Richard Stallman at Wired. Also recently by Stallman: [Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/why-free-software-is-more-important-now-than-ever-before/).

+ [Want to Evade NSA Spying? Don’t Connect to the Internet](http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/149481/): Bruce Schneier at Wired. Key takeaway: it’s hard to avoid the NSA (or, perhaps more accurately, it’s very, very inconvenient).

+ [Special Report: The Obama Administration and the Press – Leak Investigations and Surveillance in post-9/11 America](https://cpj.org/reports/2013/10/obama-and-the-press-us-leaks-surveillance-post-911.php): CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists).

Three Must Reads on the NSA Revelations

[**Time to Tame the NSA Behemoth Trampling our Rights**](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/nsa-behemoth-trampling-rights) by **Yochai Benkler** at **The Guardian**.

[**The Secret FISA Court Must Go**](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/24/the-secret-fisa-court-must-go.html) by law professors **Christopher Sprigman** and **Jennifer Granick** at **The Daily Beast**.

[**The U.S. Government has Betrayed the Internet – We Need to Take it Back**](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying) by **Bruce Schneier** at **The Guardian**.

Attackers generally benefit from new security technologies before defenders do … They have a first-mover advantage. They’re more nimble and adaptable than defensive institutions … They can evolve faster. And entropy is on their side — it’s easier to destroy something than it is to prevent, defend against, or recover from that destruction. For the most part, though, society still wins. The bad guys simply can’t do enough damage to destroy the underlying social system. The question for us is: can society still maintain security as technology becomes more advanced?

I don’t think it can.

Bruce Schneier writing at Wired: Our Security Models Will Never Work — No Matter What We Do on (i) the virtual certainty over time of successful large scale/mass casualty terrorist attacks due to weapons of mass destruction becoming cheaper and easier to produce, and (ii) creating resilient systems as an alternative to perpetually ratcheting up government surveillance and security. Read the whole thing.

Security expert (and self-described curmudgeon) Schneier’s monthly Crypto-Gram email newsletter is a great monthly read and personal favorite.