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So let's go with a rational assumption, which is that your email provider has the capability to read your email (scenarios: warrant, hacker, bored sysadmin). Y

by pnathan 16y ago

So let's go with a rational assumption, which is that your email provider has the capability to read your email (scenarios: warrant, hacker, bored sysadmin). You, being a good geek, encrypt your personal systems out the wazzoo. Then you want to take the next step: encrypted communications (examples: legal, business). This now makes your request of everyone you deal with to dink with public/private keys and - likely - some sort of infrastructure. What's the best real-world (i.e., non-propellerhead) solution to this?

thaumaturgy 16y ago
Don't communicate vital, secret, sensitive, or confidential information over email.
ChuckMcM 16y ago
What's the best real-world (i.e., non-propellerhead) solution to this? There isn't one. I've looked at creating one, and while its a sizable engineering job all the pieces are available. What it isn't is monetizable. Not like 'make me a gazillion dollars' monetizable, but like 'pay me a living wage to work on it' monetizable. The key (and its a horrible pun) is the key. You can build zero knowledge proof [1] key exchangers now (patent expired :-) and a relatively inexpensive 'key' based on either USB or bluetooh communications (see Yubikey [2] as an example). Such that email to a new third party could be done in an encrypted way such that the message could only be read when that exact party was reading the email in a reader that could get the keys to unlock it from the physical key. Like most such systems it only 'makes sense' if everyone (or at least a large fraction of everyone) has one. To get initial adoption it needs support in 'free' tools which means it needs to be open in the sense that folks can trust what it does, and implement a compatible protocol without paying you anything. To earn a spot in your pocket/purse/pack it needs to be flexible enough to accomodate other uses. To get those other uses the folks who provide them need to be able to support it for 'free' since their customers won't be paying them to put it in. So a large investment in propellor heads to make it usable by the rest of the world and achieve critical mass for adoption. Oh, and if you do start getting traction the governments of the world are going to want to disappear you (which was one of Bruce's points) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof [2] http://www.yubico.com/yubikey http://www.yubico.com/yubikey
StavrosK 16y ago
Well, there's a scale of "likelihood to be intercepted" on the left and "practicality" on the right. I'd imagine that whispering something in someone's ear with the shower running in the background would be in the far left end, and email would be the far right. As you move to the right, I imagine that OTR for IM is a very good compromise, followed by PGP, to a lesser degree. Those two should be good enough for most communication, and then there are some encrypted VoIP solutions that I don't know about.
JonnieCache 16y ago
If you have stuff that you need to keep secret from your government, only discuss it face to face. If you have so much secret stuff to talk about that its not practical to do it all face to face, then there's probably enough at stake that setting up some simple key exchanges and keeping a tight protocol will be the least of your worries.

by pnathan 16y ago

thaumaturgy 16y ago

Don't communicate vital, secret, sensitive, or confidential information over email.

ChuckMcM 16y ago

What's the best real-world (i.e., non-propellerhead) solution to this? There isn't one. I've looked at creating one, and while its a sizable engineering job all the pieces are available. What it isn't is monetizable. Not like 'make me a gazillion dollars' monetizable, but like 'pay me a living wage to work on it' monetizable. The key (and its a horrible pun) is the key. You can build zero knowledge proof [1] key exchangers now (patent expired :-) and a relatively inexpensive 'key' based on either USB or bluetooh communications (see Yubikey [2] as an example). Such that email to a new third party could be done in an encrypted way such that the message could only be read when that exact party was reading the email in a reader that could get the keys to unlock it from the physical key. Like most such systems it only 'makes sense' if everyone (or at least a large fraction of everyone) has one. To get initial adoption it needs support in 'free' tools which means it needs to be open in the sense that folks can trust what it does, and implement a compatible protocol without paying you anything. To earn a spot in your pocket/purse/pack it needs to be flexible enough to accomodate other uses. To get those other uses the folks who provide them need to be able to support it for 'free' since their customers won't be paying them to put it in. So a large investment in propellor heads to make it usable by the rest of the world and achieve critical mass for adoption. Oh, and if you do start getting traction the governments of the world are going to want to disappear you (which was one of Bruce's points) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof [2] http://www.yubico.com/yubikey http://www.yubico.com/yubikey

StavrosK 16y ago

Well, there's a scale of "likelihood to be intercepted" on the left and "practicality" on the right. I'd imagine that whispering something in someone's ear with the shower running in the background would be in the far left end, and email would be the far right. As you move to the right, I imagine that OTR for IM is a very good compromise, followed by PGP, to a lesser degree. Those two should be good enough for most communication, and then there are some encrypted VoIP solutions that I don't know about.

JonnieCache 16y ago

If you have stuff that you need to keep secret from your government, only discuss it face to face. If you have so much secret stuff to talk about that its not practical to do it all face to face, then there's probably enough at stake that setting up some simple key exchanges and keeping a tight protocol will be the least of your worries.