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The realities of the browser environment make it impossible to do what you describe. It's been possible with native clients for a long time, but has always been

The realities of the browser environment make it impossible to do what you describe. It's been possible with native clients for a long time, but has always been pretty cumbersome for non-geeks--I've been working on a native client solution that would be easy for non-geeks to use and provide a few different levels of security (which come with varying levels of convenience) that are all better than the "plain-text everywhere" option most people use now. I posted a link to this yesterday and don't mean to spam, but the topic has come up a few times in the past day, so: http://parley.co http://parley.co

noibl 14y ago
> http://parley.co http://parley.co Excellent writeup. It really helps when the conversation is steered away from terms like 'amendment', 'advertisers', 'enforcement', 'criminality' and steered back to the central idea of recovering and safeguarding an intuitive and traditional idea of privacy in personal communication (postcard analogy). Lots of people, many with vested interests, insist that this isn't possible, that the genie is out of the bottle. But let's at least try, right? In fact, PGP was a neat solution for the internet of the '90s with its quaint directory services (Bigfoot, anyone?) and dialup links. I think it had Pretty Good uptake too. So I'm very interested to see what can be done in today's environment. (Your exchange with jmillikin looked promising too. Did it continue?)
- napoleond 14y ago
  Thanks noibl, that's very generous of you. Besides being as self-conscious as anyone might be when publishing a bit of writing, I knew that I was writing for two separately critical audiences (computer security experts and those who would tend to brush off most privacy advocates as unnecessarily alarmist) which made it considerably more daunting. You put it quite well yourself, though: let's at least try. The defeatist attitude many people take toward privacy (and I'll be the first to admit, I do it too sometimes) is at least as concerning to me as the privacy challenges themselves, but I really do believe we stand a fighting chance on both fronts. My exchange with jmillikin didn't continue, unfortunately, but I really do want to discuss exactly what we're building with anyone who will listen--there will be more information on the website soon enough but I would love for anyone who reads this to email me any time. My email is in my profile.

noibl 14y ago

> http://parley.co http://parley.co Excellent writeup. It really helps when the conversation is steered away from terms like 'amendment', 'advertisers', 'enforcement', 'criminality' and steered back to the central idea of recovering and safeguarding an intuitive and traditional idea of privacy in personal communication (postcard analogy). Lots of people, many with vested interests, insist that this isn't possible, that the genie is out of the bottle. But let's at least try, right? In fact, PGP was a neat solution for the internet of the '90s with its quaint directory services (Bigfoot, anyone?) and dialup links. I think it had Pretty Good uptake too. So I'm very interested to see what can be done in today's environment. (Your exchange with jmillikin looked promising too. Did it continue?)

napoleond 14y ago
Thanks noibl, that's very generous of you. Besides being as self-conscious as anyone might be when publishing a bit of writing, I knew that I was writing for two separately critical audiences (computer security experts and those who would tend to brush off most privacy advocates as unnecessarily alarmist) which made it considerably more daunting. You put it quite well yourself, though: let's at least try. The defeatist attitude many people take toward privacy (and I'll be the first to admit, I do it too sometimes) is at least as concerning to me as the privacy challenges themselves, but I really do believe we stand a fighting chance on both fronts. My exchange with jmillikin didn't continue, unfortunately, but I really do want to discuss exactly what we're building with anyone who will listen--there will be more information on the website soon enough but I would love for anyone who reads this to email me any time. My email is in my profile.