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Ultimately, this is the same as when the CEO tells me he's disabled anti-virus protection because the popups annoyed him, or that he's using a personal Dropbox
by blowski 11y ago
Ultimately, this is the same as when the CEO tells me he's disabled anti-virus protection because the popups annoyed him, or that he's using a personal Dropbox account so he doesn't have to go through that pesky login process onto the network drive.
My guess is that to many people in power, the benefits of using these web services seem to outweigh the disadvantages because they just don't understand the disadvantages. "It's OK - I set a great password!" There's simply nobody powerful enough to monitor what they're doing, independent enough to want to do something about it, and respected enough for people to listen.
We need independent bodies that act as national 'IT departments' and can refuse requests from the very highest powers, in much the same way that any other Head of IT can fire someone for gross misconduct because they were downloading torrents on their company laptop.
- jegutman 11y agoYou make a totally fair point, but I think it's also a fair criticism of the state of proper computer security that plenty of people opt-out as a result of the inconveniences. Someone will solve this someday and make a lot of money, but I have no idea what the solution is.
- wavefunction 11y agoThe US Federal system was designed to have checks and balances provided by oversight by different branches of government. Unfortunately today we have people in these branches of government who either won't do their duty because they are terrible at their jobs or because there is a silent quid-pro-quo where these sorts of people look the other way for each other.
- blowski 11y agoWhile you're absolutely right in your diagnosis of the problem in the US, I doubt these problems are specific to the US government. I'm a Brit, and there are enough stories of technical incompetence here to make me assume it's a global problem. I suspect even non-democracies have the same issue. Who's going to tell Kim Jong-un he needs to rotate passwords?
- wavefunction 11y agoThanks for your thoughtful response, not sure what I said that rated downvoting on my comment but apparently members of the CIA and Congressional oversight committee are members of hn ;)
- Zigurd 11y agoI would flip that around: Make zero-knowledge systems and strong encryption routine in consumer internet products and services. Then you could use your yahoo or AOL mail for anything and there would be no bad consequences. Seems more reliable than trying to enforce the use of some crappy system made by a beltway bandit that is hard to use and inconvenient.