Soft security is not weak security.

Soft security is not weak security.

The idea is to protect the system and its users from harm, in gentle and unobtrusive ways. The opposite of HardSecurity. It follows NonViolence. Instead of using violence, it works architecturally in defense to convincepeople against attacking and to LimitDamage. It works socially in offense to convince people to be friendly and to get out of the way of people adding value. Soft security is difficult. It often requires you to grow as a person, sometimes painfully so. This by itself makes it valuable.

 SoftSecurity is like water. It bends under attack, only to rush in from all directions to fill the gaps. It's strong over time yet adaptable to any shape. It seeks to influence and encourage, not control and enforce.

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. -- Bruce Lee

The earlier and more primitive animals were mostly made from soft materials because they not only make it much easier to wriggle and extend oneself in various ways, but soft tissues are usually tough (as we shall see), while rigid ones like bone are often brittle. Furthermore, the use of rigid materials impose all kinds of difficulties in connection with growth and reproduction. .... One gets the impression that Nature has accepted the use of stiff materials rather reluctantly..." -- J.E. Gordon, Structures: or Why Things Don't Fall Down

I made what I think is a somewhat nuanced and complicated argument about the nature of security. As such it is difficult to summarize. Basically I think that security measures of a purely technological nature, such as guns and crypto, are of real value, but that the great bulk of our security, at least in modern industrialized nations, derives from intangible factors having to do with the social fabric, which are poorly understood by just about everyone. If that is true, then those who wish to use the Internet as a tool for enhancing security, freedom, and other good things might wish to turn their efforts away from purely technical fixes and try to develop some understanding of just what the social fabric is, how it works, and how the Internet could enhance it. However this may conflict with the (absolutely reasonable and understandable) desire for privacy. --NealStephenson, ComputersFreedomAndPrivacy 2000 (Toronto)