Ed Bellis – ClearText

To keep you occupied while I write my next post, here are a few items I recommend reading on various topics related to this blog:

Bruce Schneier writes about the economic externalities of information security.

The perception of security is discussed over at Financial Cryptography, along with a humerous but sad commentary on obtaining a credit card.

Michael Sutton writes about the security theatre of Extended Validation SSL certificates.

Happy reading!

Here is an idea that will be a tough sell to anyone who is not an economist. Dwight Lee proposes creating a market for the buying and selling of U.S. citzenships. Obviously a controversial idea.

The devil would be in the details. We would need to ensure all the immigration rules around safety and security apply. In addition, you would need somewhere for the seller to go, selling your citzenship without permission to move to another country should not be an option.I would be curious to find out where the price of admission ultimately falls out.

While overall an interesting idea, this will not address many of the immigration concerns currently being debated. This leaves a large contigent of people who will not be able to afford US citzenship but will still have the desire to live here. Assuming the rules of admission stay relatively the same, but the price goes up, this can only increase the number of people who will enter illegally. I am usually a fan of allowing a market to correct itself, but this may not be an appropriate arena.