It is really nice to get a coherent, human view from inside the security and intelligence community. To the best of my knowledge, the article reads as an honest

It is really nice to get a coherent, human view from inside the security and intelligence community. To the best of my knowledge, the article reads as an honest and true account of security service culture of integrity and professionalism. Kudos to him, and kudos to his colleagues as well for their restraint and their service. I am pleased to see him hint at the exposure and vulnerability of the general public to surveillance by third parties, when he describes of the ongoing battle to dominate electronic systems, being waged by various nation-states and criminal gangs around the world. (I refuse to use that horribly juvenile construction "cyber-war"). However, we still have some way to go before we fully confront the magnitude of the problem, and are able to formulate a sensible and coherent response. Our military forces and security services are rightly part of our response to this vulnerability, but they cannot be the only tool that we deploy. Societies that lean to heavily on their armed forces and security services quickly feel the negative effects of their reliance, no matter how well-intentioned, well-disciplined and professional the servicemen and servicewomen may be. Civil society needs to step up to the plate also. The problem is difficult, and the response needs to be multifaceted and broad. As engineers, we need to make our systems more secure and more trustworthy - and we need to make tools for the creation of secure and trustworthy systems ubiquitous. For example, I am writing software for advanced driver assistance systems & autonomous vehicles -- I need to think very very carefully about how I can make my software secure and robust from attack; I need to educate my colleagues about the risky environment that we will be operating in, and together, we need to come up with standards and processes to help us ensure that the software we create minimises the risk posed by malicious actors.