I think Schneier is a great advocate as of recent and has become a more inspiring security leader (compared to many who are just talking heads who have no real

I think Schneier is a great advocate as of recent and has become a more inspiring security leader (compared to many who are just talking heads who have no real experience, comparatively). That being said, I feel he was a different person when Counterpane got bought out by BT. I happened to work for BT North America Professional Services at the time, which was ultimately purchased headcount from International Network Services to expand quickly. We had no access to Counterpane resources for the most part - although we were told to try and work some of the Counterpane product into consulting recommendations. I tried a few times to get involved with what Counterpane used to be, with the intent of trying to get some facetime with Schneier to really find out who he was (was very deterministic about finding a good mentor at the time). Long story short - BT was so fragmented internally to tie the name BT to Counterpane, or even Schneier was a joke. It was obvious after the first few months that BT bought Counterpane for the talking head (IMHO) which I still feel was true up until now. Schneier's name was worth more than the IP they bought, most likely. Sad state of affairs. BT was, and still today, has no interest in improving security within their own telecom products, but wanted to be very good at the emerging pentesting market (back in 2007'ish). They're no better than the PWCs of the world today - overpriced scanning services with no real meat, but they have a few key folks to make it look like they 'can'. TL;DR Glad to see Schneier leaving. I thought it was hypocritical of him working for BT given his recent improvement in position publicly around the Snowden releases. I have renewed respect for him.