Keynote address to BlackHat 2005 by Gilman Louie. I enjoyed this speech a lot, but came away with some fear and loathing. First off - this guy brought Tetris over from Russia way back in the day, so you figure he would be all fun, happy and kind of post Soviet sunshine - not true. He brought the hate-on for the InfoSec community and the so called Intel organizations in the Gov't / Military. His message (this only became really apparent to me once I re-read my notes) was that America has created a culture of fear and paranoia that is approaching the level once endured under Soviet Rule in the Eastern Block. He postulates that an obsession of security will eventually bankrupt your country and drive your population away in droves.

Is the harbinger of the Western world InfoSec? Well I am not convinced yet, so I kept listening to his keynote. He defends to front line techs as well intentioned souls that are constantly being pushed around by the Security Policy community which he calls InfoSec posers.

I really like his point about information restrictions and brain dead IT policies causing users to circumvent the safe guards just get to get their job done. I felt encouraged by his message that the Information Security community should evolve into the Information Effectiveness community and that it is our duty to remove the needless barriers that are suffocating our intelligence organizations.

All in all it was an impassioned keynote address - which is to say it was effective at stirring emotion in the attendees, but in the end I was left shaking my head at how on earth the Tetris guy got so damn angry ...