Bruce Schneier wants to make surveillance costly again

alphadogg writes: The ongoing revelations of governmental electronic spying point to a problem larger than National Security Agency malfeasance, or even of security weaknesses. Rather the controversy arising from Edward Snowden's leaked documents suggest we face unresolved issues around data ownership, argues security expert Bruce Schneier. "Fundamentally, this is a debate about data sharing, about surveillance as a business model, about the dichotomy of the societal benefits of big data versus the individual risks of personal data," Schneier told attendees of the Usenix LISA Conference being held in Washington this week. "We might not buy [it], but the basic NSA argument is 'You must give us your data because it is keeping you safe.'" Schneier has been an outspoken critic of the NSA since Snowden first leaked documents showing the many ways in which the intelligence agency had tapped into the Internet and data centers to collect data en masse about people's activities.