I'm trying to avoid blogging over the NSA's acquisition of telephone records from a number of major telephone companies. Given my ability to avoid virtually all important issues, I'll probably succeed.
Bruce Schneir is conducting a Terrorist Movie Plot Threat Contest, in which people are asked to submit the most unlikely, yet plausible, terrorist scenarios that they can.
What if you have a tremendous idea for an entry? Should you post it to Schneier's blog, or would you just be giving ideas to terrorists, who may be crouching in their caves in Afghanistan, Pakistan, New York, or Caracas, surfing the 'net to find ideas for their next attacks?
This concern mirrors the discussion over whether people who discover security vulnerabilities should announce them to the public or rely upon security through obscurity. Peter Swire has written at least two pieces on the subject, both of which are available on SSRN and discussed on his blog.
Some of the arguments in favor of disclosure of vulnerabilities are based upon the idea that the bad guys will ultimately find a particular vulnerability anyway, so disclosure helps the good guys to find vulnerabilities, and also encourages them to fix them. Without pretending that my thoughts correspond to reality in any way, I wonder whether that reasoning holds for creative ideas. Although such ideas are based upon identifying vulnerabilities (otherwise, they wouldn't work), can we assume that the bad guys will ultimately arrive at all creative plans? Is it hubristic to think that bad people won't come up with your unique idea? The patent system is based, in part, upon the premise that some people will think up inventions that others won't, so maybe it's not ridiculous to think that, if your terrorist idea is good enough, then you should keep it to yourself. I don't know that Hollywood is going to be the source of such clever or creative ideas, though.