Open security

It might seem odd that on the day of President Obama's visit to Ottawa a newspaper would publish details of his limousine's security features (the Ottawa Citizen, on A5; it doesn't seem to be on their website). But it is a feature of open socities that we have open discussions of everything including of threats and responses. And while it's true that in any given instance the revealing of specifics might seem helpful only to the bad guys, the cumulative effect of having everybody able to analyse, discuss and suggest improvements is immensely increased security. (Hmnnnn. Maybe there's a lesson there for those who would use the power of the state to silence potentially offensive speech.)