More stuff I wish I could blog about

In another installment of the disturbingly frequent series of posts which only advert to things I would write about at more length if I had more time, I present for your approval this extremely interesting article from Bruce Schneier via Wired.com. In the article Bruce looks at the differing reactions of U.S. and European courts to potential disclosures of security flaws. In short, the U.S. courts, though ostensibly bound by the first amendment, prohibited disclosure of the flaws, while the European courts supported the free speech rights of the researchers who found the flaws. While Bruce didn't really explore the rich history of prior restraints in U.S. law, or discuss how antithetical such prior restraints (supposedly) are to our system, he did a very good job of explaining why suppressing free dissemination of information about security flaws is a bad idea from a practical standpoint, rather than just a legal one.

In any case, as I said at the beginning of the post, I'd love to blog about this further. However, given my current time situation, I'll have to be content with linking to the article, and identifying it as just one more example of why civil liberties (in this case freedom of speech), even when they appear to be detrimental to security interests, shouldn't be thrown aside lightly.