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I agree that easy, broadly-accessible secure communication is an important problem to solve, but it does not address the (arguably larger) problem of eroded soc
by RyanMcGreal 13y ago
I agree that easy, broadly-accessible secure communication is an important problem to solve, but it does not address the (arguably larger) problem of eroded social trust. A low-trust society just doesn't work very well, and no amount of technical mitigation is going to compensate for that.
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoI agree, but I think the trust that is required is trust in transactions, whether electronic, commercial, or otherwise, not particularly trust in people or institutions. To take the current NSA issue, if I take the time to vote for a Congress guy, in return I'm expecting somebody to represent my area in Washington. He doesn't have to agree with me, just represent me. If, in fact, he doesn't know what's going on, or is so captured by the political system that he's unable to make independent decisions, I've lost faith in that transaction. I never may have liked the guy, or ever agreed with him, or trusted him farther than I could throw him, but we had a deal as a society where I did something and he was supposed to do something. If those societal transactions are not to be trusted, the wheels come off the wagon. Same kind of discussion applies for electronic transactions, say using SMTP to move email around.