3 ms·

The problem is, as with firearms, criminals always have access to them. In this Flipper Zero case, dissemination of such tool can actually improve common peopl

The problem is, as with firearms, criminals always have access to them. In this Flipper Zero case, dissemination of such tool can actually improve common people awareness on tech security.

anigbrowl 4y ago
improve common people awareness on tech security Not really. Nerds think this is true because they imagine everyone else is similarly interested in technology; they're not. You would have to spend 5 or 10 minutes explaining to an average non-tech person what the F0 does and then they would probably throw up their hands or mention the police rather than learn security stuff themselves. Very few people want to know about security, they just want to buy it. Learning has a high and unpredictable time cost. People who want to develop defensive security awareness can do it anyway, same as criminals. Common people absolutely do not.
- serf 4y ago
  >Not really. Nerds think this is true because they imagine everyone else is similarly interested in technology; they're not. opening up a car door or a garage door is an EASY sell to a laymen. It affects their personal security. I showed my elderly father some tricks with the flipper, he's not technical in the least -- his first reply was : "Well how do we prevent people from ... " Awareness is bought with information. Had my father not been shown a demonstration it's unlikely that he'd try to protect himself with just the mention of a verbal warning. In fact, given that an entire country is moving towards legislation on such devices I am not sure how anyone could argue that 'everyone else' isn't interested in technology -- an entire country just announced laws against the thing; surely this isn't some kind of mass collective hallucination and indicates that the general pedestrian sector is at least considering the danger, no?
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    I'm not arguing that 'everyone else' is 'disinterested in technology, but that they're not similarly interested, that is they are not going to invest the same time as you would in learning about it. As I said, their default response to a demonstrated security failure is to either express dismay or refer to the police. Most people want to just buy security. Now, if you see a commercial opportunity in being a security salesman and using a F0 as a demonstration tool, have at it. But if you expect this to lead to some mass upgrade of security consciousness, you're fooling yourself. Look at lock picking/hacking videos on Twitter and realize how in the US, a rich and technologically advanced country, even the police default to laughably bad security measures. People prioritize convenience, and showing them the error of their ways will just result in most of them choosing to pay more money for a more secure-seeming solution while still prioritizing convenience. You could show people two different-sized padlocks with identical bad locking mechanisms, and people would still assume the larger one offers better protection. In a way they're right, because causal/opportunist criminals are also lazy and while they might use force to pop a small lock, they might not consider the effort and time to pop the big one worth the increased risk of being spotted. Smart criminals that know how to pick or finesse a lock (perhaps even putting it back afterwards) are much less common.

The problem is, as with firearms, criminals always have access to them. In this Flipper Zero case, dissemination of such tool can actually improve common people awareness on tech security.

anigbrowl 4y ago

improve common people awareness on tech security Not really. Nerds think this is true because they imagine everyone else is similarly interested in technology; they're not. You would have to spend 5 or 10 minutes explaining to an average non-tech person what the F0 does and then they would probably throw up their hands or mention the police rather than learn security stuff themselves. Very few people want to know about security, they just want to buy it. Learning has a high and unpredictable time cost. People who want to develop defensive security awareness can do it anyway, same as criminals. Common people absolutely do not.

serf 4y ago
>Not really. Nerds think this is true because they imagine everyone else is similarly interested in technology; they're not. opening up a car door or a garage door is an EASY sell to a laymen. It affects their personal security. I showed my elderly father some tricks with the flipper, he's not technical in the least -- his first reply was : "Well how do we prevent people from ... " Awareness is bought with information. Had my father not been shown a demonstration it's unlikely that he'd try to protect himself with just the mention of a verbal warning. In fact, given that an entire country is moving towards legislation on such devices I am not sure how anyone could argue that 'everyone else' isn't interested in technology -- an entire country just announced laws against the thing; surely this isn't some kind of mass collective hallucination and indicates that the general pedestrian sector is at least considering the danger, no?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I'm not arguing that 'everyone else' is 'disinterested in technology, but that they're not similarly interested, that is they are not going to invest the same time as you would in learning about it. As I said, their default response to a demonstrated security failure is to either express dismay or refer to the police. Most people want to just buy security. Now, if you see a commercial opportunity in being a security salesman and using a F0 as a demonstration tool, have at it. But if you expect this to lead to some mass upgrade of security consciousness, you're fooling yourself. Look at lock picking/hacking videos on Twitter and realize how in the US, a rich and technologically advanced country, even the police default to laughably bad security measures. People prioritize convenience, and showing them the error of their ways will just result in most of them choosing to pay more money for a more secure-seeming solution while still prioritizing convenience. You could show people two different-sized padlocks with identical bad locking mechanisms, and people would still assume the larger one offers better protection. In a way they're right, because causal/opportunist criminals are also lazy and while they might use force to pop a small lock, they might not consider the effort and time to pop the big one worth the increased risk of being spotted. Smart criminals that know how to pick or finesse a lock (perhaps even putting it back afterwards) are much less common.