Bruce Schneier

A recent story of a writer who was mistakenly identified, tracked, and arrested using data from Flock cameras has gone viral. The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM , not 34 10 DTM . But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM . Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began pick…

Lots of articles about this . As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.

Really interesting piece of cryptographic history : In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the “Bayley papers”—was auctioned in London for almost half a million U.S. dollars. The previously unknown cache contains many sheets in Turing’s own handwriting, telling of his top-secret “Delilah” engineering project from 1943 to 1945. Delilah was Turing’s portable voice-encryption system, named after the biblical deceiver of men. There is also material written by Bayley, often …

Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link ) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effective way to regulate privacy in this era. Instead, we need to hold companies accountable for their actions, similar to what we do with food and drug companies. Measures such as rigorous data minimization, fiduciary duties, liability for negligent or reckless technological design, liability for algorithms that cause harm, and multi-stakeholder review of technologies …

Amazing : Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, however, managed to create a new type of pixel that can simultaneously do both. This hypercharged pixel, called a Fourier pixel, can generate and sense arbitrary light fields and tap into a pixel’s full potential for carrying information by manipulating light’s intensity, oscillation phases, and polarization. The team reported its findings in a paper published yesterday in Nature. We are one step closer to 1984 technology: The telescreen rec…

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking (virtually) at the Policy-Relevant Privacy Research Workshop in Calgary, Canada, on Monday, July 20, 2026. I’m speaking at Boston Leadership Exchange in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on Wednesday, July 22, 2026. I’m speaking at Cognitive Security Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The conference runs August 6-7, 2026; my speaking time is TBD. I’m speaking at DEF CON 34 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The conventions runs…

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian . Opposition to AI data centers has emerged as a primary theme in US politics, one that—surprisingly—doesn’t fall along party lines. We applaud people coming together for constructive debate on any issue, and agree that communities need to evaluate whether any economic benefits these data centers bring is worth their costs. Still, we worry that a focus on data centers obscures the larger impacts of AI on peop…

In a rare combined cybersecurity/squid post, a twenty-nine-year-old squid proxy bug can leak HTTP requests. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered. Blog moderation policy.

In the near future, AI -powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong—shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it—the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities… and maybe also to the general public. Think of these systems as automated speed cameras, but on steroids. Only they’ll enforce …