"NSA is a very conservative culture legally. Our lawyers at NSA were notorious for their conservatism..." — Michael Hayden

Global security can be formed or threatened by heads of state whose wisdom, folly and obsessions shape global events. But often it is the security practitioners, those rarely in the headlines but whose craft and energy quietly break new ground, who keep us safe or put us in peril.

At the end of the 30 Years War then, Europe broadly decided to separate the sacred from the secular in its political culture. I know that is an oversimplification, but it is instructive, and it led to a growth in religious tolerance that has characterized the best of Western life since.

Accusations fit on a bumper sticker; the truth takes longer.

The arc of technology is in the direction of unbreakable encryption, and no laws are going to get in the way of that reality.