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This is a well-written piece that takes a step toward clearly discussing tech security issues in laymen's terms. Which is an important step. The failure to ade

This is a well-written piece that takes a step toward clearly discussing tech security issues in laymen's terms. Which is an important step. The failure to adequately describe the security landscape to those outside the technology sector is the greatest failure of technologists in the last 5-10 years. The NSA revelations were lost on america as a whole. They were muddied by confusing technologies and what many considered to be treasonous means. In this regard, snowden was the whistleblower technologists needed, not the one america needed. The person or company to bear that standard has yet to be identified. I would say our job as technologists is two-fold: first, we must continue to press our organizations for privacy and the security of our users. The e2e encryption focus is a great example of this. Just as important is our ability to communicate security problems in a manner accessible to the common voter. Without their understanding, and passionate support, privacy in the tech sector will be relegated to the "anarchists" and criminals. Tor suffers this treatment and e2e encryption is already being painted in a similar light. It is essential that pieces like this continue to be written. Collectively, we need to learn to distill this complex issue into language everyone empathizes with as much as technologists do.

mindslight 9y ago
> Just as important is our ability to communicate security problems in a manner accessible to the common voter When the "common voter" has shirked the general principle of individualist autonomy the country was founded with, how could they possibly be receptive to that principle applied to a new technology? For instance, firearms are a pretty old distributed-autonomy technology that predates everybody alive by several generations. We can debate their actual efficacy in preventing tyranny, but this isn't relevant to their status as but one tool. Yet every time some nutjob makes it on TV with a new high score, a not-insignificant number of people earnestly argue that if we make b(r)oomsticks illegal, the witch problem will be solved! What it really comes down to is the sheer amount of propaganda form centralized control structures that we are steeped in. Humans are social creatures that defer to group consensus, and group consensus is heavily defined by repetition. Power desires more power, and not even out of malevolence, but the lure of the singular-narrator God delusion. The surveillance-industrial complex (Google et al) is profitable, with plenty of money to normalize their vision of surveillance culture throughout society. There is no countervoice, because distributed autonomy does not create centralized profits! The message of freedom will only be spread by giving people access to individualistic technologies (eg secure aka steganographic filesystems, and transparent p2p communication) that they can gradually learn to rely on. We must look for ways that people at the edges can gain immediate utility (eg "piracy"), without needing to buy into the whole abstract message at once. Even then, the necessity of forging one's own way will only become apparent when the totalitarian system actually collapses under the burden of its own complexity.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  Conversely, every nutjob with a gun argues against basic supply and demand analysis, saying that restricting the supply of weapons that simplify killing won't reduce the number of killings, when everybody who has gone through Econ 101 knows that shifting the supply curve to the right will result in a new, lower equilibrium number of killings. If you care so much about freedom, why aren't you arguing that Walmart should be allowed to sell ready-made phone-triggered bombs to anybody who wants one? The EFF makes a good case for why Rosenstein is wrong, and it's not some black and white freedom issue.
  - mindslight 9y ago
    Firstly, because I'm not in the market for phone-triggered bombs, especially at the scale/price of wanting mass-produced ones. More importantly because, as I alluded to above, I don't personally believe that small arms are effective at preventing tyranny (in fact, they seem to foster of a false sense of security!). So while I wouldn't be against such a proposal, I believe my focus is better spent on communications freedom. Also, even if we brush past the oddity of analyzing recreational murder in supply-demand terms - wouldn't it be more straightforward to decrease the demand (eg indict the news media for profiting off of it) rather than increasing the difficulty of a single method?
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      > Firstly, because I'm not in the market for phone-triggered bombs, especially at the scale/price of wanting mass-produced ones. So you're only interested in the freedom to do what you want, not what other people want? Then since I'm not in the market for guns, I should be allowed to restrict you from getting one too. > Also, even if we brush past the oddity of analyzing recreational murder in supply-demand terms.... Markets aren't "odd." They simply exist. You can design markets to further society's interests, or you can pretend that we live in a pre-enlightenment era where we don't know how anything works and don't care to figure anything out.
      - 9y ago
sametmax 9y ago
The reality is much simpler: security issues in computing don't affect the layman's life enough so that people feel concerned about it. A few people are conned, or have their identity stolen. But the vast majority just had a slow windows XP and a few toolbars attached to their web browser. They couldn't care less. As for bigger issues, like gov spying, it's exactly the same. They can't see any link between it and their personal life, and have no interest in projecting what could happen in the future as they have no will to participate in building the system they live in. Caring for society is a niche feeling. The only thing that would make people react would be a massive and violent catastrophy, with strong symbolic value. And remember that equifax didn't cut it: the outrage barely trickled to outside the geek circles. So it needs to be bigger, and simpler to understand.

mindslight 9y ago

> Just as important is our ability to communicate security problems in a manner accessible to the common voter When the "common voter" has shirked the general principle of individualist autonomy the country was founded with, how could they possibly be receptive to that principle applied to a new technology? For instance, firearms are a pretty old distributed-autonomy technology that predates everybody alive by several generations. We can debate their actual efficacy in preventing tyranny, but this isn't relevant to their status as but one tool. Yet every time some nutjob makes it on TV with a new high score, a not-insignificant number of people earnestly argue that if we make b(r)oomsticks illegal, the witch problem will be solved! What it really comes down to is the sheer amount of propaganda form centralized control structures that we are steeped in. Humans are social creatures that defer to group consensus, and group consensus is heavily defined by repetition. Power desires more power, and not even out of malevolence, but the lure of the singular-narrator God delusion. The surveillance-industrial complex (Google et al) is profitable, with plenty of money to normalize their vision of surveillance culture throughout society. There is no countervoice, because distributed autonomy does not create centralized profits! The message of freedom will only be spread by giving people access to individualistic technologies (eg secure aka steganographic filesystems, and transparent p2p communication) that they can gradually learn to rely on. We must look for ways that people at the edges can gain immediate utility (eg "piracy"), without needing to buy into the whole abstract message at once. Even then, the necessity of forging one's own way will only become apparent when the totalitarian system actually collapses under the burden of its own complexity.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
Conversely, every nutjob with a gun argues against basic supply and demand analysis, saying that restricting the supply of weapons that simplify killing won't reduce the number of killings, when everybody who has gone through Econ 101 knows that shifting the supply curve to the right will result in a new, lower equilibrium number of killings. If you care so much about freedom, why aren't you arguing that Walmart should be allowed to sell ready-made phone-triggered bombs to anybody who wants one? The EFF makes a good case for why Rosenstein is wrong, and it's not some black and white freedom issue.
- mindslight 9y ago
  Firstly, because I'm not in the market for phone-triggered bombs, especially at the scale/price of wanting mass-produced ones. More importantly because, as I alluded to above, I don't personally believe that small arms are effective at preventing tyranny (in fact, they seem to foster of a false sense of security!). So while I wouldn't be against such a proposal, I believe my focus is better spent on communications freedom. Also, even if we brush past the oddity of analyzing recreational murder in supply-demand terms - wouldn't it be more straightforward to decrease the demand (eg indict the news media for profiting off of it) rather than increasing the difficulty of a single method?
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    > Firstly, because I'm not in the market for phone-triggered bombs, especially at the scale/price of wanting mass-produced ones. So you're only interested in the freedom to do what you want, not what other people want? Then since I'm not in the market for guns, I should be allowed to restrict you from getting one too. > Also, even if we brush past the oddity of analyzing recreational murder in supply-demand terms.... Markets aren't "odd." They simply exist. You can design markets to further society's interests, or you can pretend that we live in a pre-enlightenment era where we don't know how anything works and don't care to figure anything out.
    - 9y ago

sametmax 9y ago

The reality is much simpler: security issues in computing don't affect the layman's life enough so that people feel concerned about it. A few people are conned, or have their identity stolen. But the vast majority just had a slow windows XP and a few toolbars attached to their web browser. They couldn't care less. As for bigger issues, like gov spying, it's exactly the same. They can't see any link between it and their personal life, and have no interest in projecting what could happen in the future as they have no will to participate in building the system they live in. Caring for society is a niche feeling. The only thing that would make people react would be a massive and violent catastrophy, with strong symbolic value. And remember that equifax didn't cut it: the outrage barely trickled to outside the geek circles. So it needs to be bigger, and simpler to understand.