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GENERAL KNOWLEDGE Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive Bruce Schneier. 2012. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. (http://www.wiley.com). 350 pages. ISBN: 978-1-118-14330-8
CSQE Body of Knowledge areas: I.B Ethical and Legal Compliance
Note: This review is based on an advanced uncorrected proof received from the publisher.
In his first book, Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier suggested that properly selected and implemented cryptography will resolve any issues with trust in the modern world. With subsequent publications, his views on information security have broadened to take more into account the underlying factors- society, legal systems, and so on. His latest book will not provide solutions to one's security woes. It won't even provide a framework on which to build or expand one's general security knowledge (well, not by much). It is, however, a great read!
In Liars & Outliers the author takes several steps back to look at society as whole-how it evolved and what mechanisms it implements (and could implement) to build the trust necessary for it to thrive. Toward this end he applies knowledge from a list of diverse fields- from the obvious (law), to the not-so-obvious (biology), to some that might seem arcane (theology). This provokes...