The Homeland Insecurity article in the Atlantic debunks our slide toward purely techno solutions to security issues. We need to be thinking about security flexibility and what our systems do when there is a failure. Every system will fail at some point. It's how the system responds to the failure that counts. Systems need to be designed that failures can be contained; that there is no single firewall that, when breached, allows total access to the territory inside.

The way people think about security, especially security on computer networks, is almost always wrong. All too often planners seek technological cure-alls, when such security measures at best limit risks to acceptable levels. In particular, the consequences of going wrong to acceptable levels. In particular, the consequences of going wrong—and all these systems go wrong sometimes—are rarely considered. For these reasons Schneier believes that most of the security measures envisioned after September 11 will be ineffective, and that some will make Americans less safe.

To forestall attacks, security systems need to be small-scale, redundant, and compartmentalized. Rather than large, sweeping programs, they should be carefully crafted mosaics, each piece aimed at a specific weakness.