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The term “security theater” has a specific meaning which is not a bug or less than perfect protection: per its creator, “Security theater refers to security mea

by acdha 3y ago

The term “security theater” has a specific meaning which is not a bug or less than perfect protection: per its creator, “Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.” https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_securi... Public Relay is obviously not accurately described by that term and any rule which classifies it as such would be useless because it would classify all browser security as theater because everyone has had bugs, and everyone has had to adopt more sophisticated defenses to counter more sophisticated attackers.

lapcat 3y ago
[flagged]
- acdha 3y ago
  Yes, and privacy theater is clearly an attempt to apply the same concept to a closely related topic. I edited my comment to focus on the problem here: you started with this absurdly sweeping claim which you’ve been unable to meaningfully substantiate throughout the thread. Trying to dismiss something as theater based on a bug fixed in the beta period is not only self-contradictory (you’re tacitly admitting that it’s not theater now) but also almost useless as a heuristic because very few products never have bugs. Now if we want to talk about guidelines, consider that the broad claim you originally made would have to be widely accepted in the industry not to need supporting evidence, at which point it wouldn’t be contributing anything; since the opposite is true, the guidelines about flame bait cover it. It could have gone in a potentially useful direction if you’d been willing to define your terms and support them with evidence, and that would have helped suggest less hyperbolic terms. For example, if you said that Apple could do better at vetting and implementing their features I doubt many people would disagree with you.

by acdha 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

[flagged]

acdha 3y ago
Yes, and privacy theater is clearly an attempt to apply the same concept to a closely related topic. I edited my comment to focus on the problem here: you started with this absurdly sweeping claim which you’ve been unable to meaningfully substantiate throughout the thread. Trying to dismiss something as theater based on a bug fixed in the beta period is not only self-contradictory (you’re tacitly admitting that it’s not theater now) but also almost useless as a heuristic because very few products never have bugs. Now if we want to talk about guidelines, consider that the broad claim you originally made would have to be widely accepted in the industry not to need supporting evidence, at which point it wouldn’t be contributing anything; since the opposite is true, the guidelines about flame bait cover it. It could have gone in a potentially useful direction if you’d been willing to define your terms and support them with evidence, and that would have helped suggest less hyperbolic terms. For example, if you said that Apple could do better at vetting and implementing their features I doubt many people would disagree with you.