Bruce Schneier: Moore's Law's Detrimental Effect on Privacy

No stranger to controversy, security expert Bruce Schneier was happy to take a swipe at Moore's Law in front of an audience at the University of Southern California on Tuesday. Schneier, founder and chief technology offier of Counterpane Internet Security, argued that the biggest threat to privacy was the sheer ease with which information can be gathered to such an extent that data was now "a pollutant". This availability was down to a number of factors, he said. "To look at it, Moore's law is actually a friend of intrusive tools," Schneier argued.

"As the cost of data storage gets cheaper, as the cost of data collection gets cheaper, more intrusion, more surveillance is possible," he said. Surveillance technology has been developing to the extent that it is becoming the major threat to our society, argued Schneier. "The cameras are everywhere and you can still see them. Come back in 10 years and you won't see them any more."

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