4 ms·

My highly cynical take: education. It will fucking take education. All this "oh my god but PGP is so complicated, how can a regular user be expected to use all

by weland 12y ago

My highly cynical take: education. It will fucking take education. All this "oh my god but PGP is so complicated, how can a regular user be expected to use all this?" thing is crap we use to delude ourselves into ignoring the fact that most e-mail users are too ignorant to understand why invasions of their privacy are so dangerous, let alone that it can be done or how. Seriously, it's not complicated. There are a ton of everyday tasks that are far more complicated than setting up and using Enigmail, and yet average users do them every day. If people can set up a fucking network printer with HP's crapware, they can most certainly use a PGP plug-in for their e-mail client of choice. PGP does have a lot of problems, from unencrypted subjects to usability problems with mailing lists and stuff. But it's still better than nothing, and if poor usability were such an important factor, Altair 8800 would have been the first and last PC. But even if all these problems were to be solved, we'd still face the fact that the vast majority of e-mail users don't even know what a mail client is, don't understand just how widely-available the contents of their messages are, and don't really understand the far-reaching implications of them being available pretty much in the open. And even after that, we'd have to face the even sadder reality that this is but a really tiny win in terms of privacy, because convincing people to use PGP is nothing compared to convincing people to stop using Facebook, Google and webmasters to stop using the tracking shit that fills 90% of the post-web 2.0 pages.

Karunamon 12y ago
Difficulty is problem #0. PGP is fucking complicated, annoying, and non-user-friendly to use as a computer literate individual that codes for a living. How do you expect the chain-email-forwarding-toolbar-installing-click-here-for-free-smileys average person to understand it, with the knowledge that screwups in encryption land have the very real possibility to render all that work useless? The average person doesn't see the value proposition for going through all that effort. Shouting "GOVERNMENT SCARY" at them isn't going to work. Solving problem 0 would be a massive net benefit for society. You need a cross platform and cross client tool that looks good, is easy enough for my gran to understand, and that does the encryption right. There is no such tool that exists today. The Catch-22 is problem #1, after problem #0. You can encrypt your own stuff all day long, but you aren't emailing encrypted stuff to anyone until a critical mass of people have also gotten past problem #0 long enough to have avoided saying "fuck it" and have distributed their public keys to everyone they know. On top of all this, you're pushing encryption as a philosophical measure rather than a practical one. For more on how pure philosophy holds up when practicality intrudes, look at the free software movement.
- weland 12y ago
  > PGP is fucking complicated, annoying, and non-user-friendly to use as a computer literate individual that codes for a living. I really don't think it is. Yes, it took me two days or so of reading stuff and chaining commands when I was using mutt. Enigmail is literally point and click. You follow a wizard with three screens or so to set up and all you need to learn after that is how to do the whole web of trust thing. It takes about as much time as it takes to learn Word's stupid track changes mode. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it even easier to use, but it's in a state where it's pretty much useable without being a hacker. > Shouting "GOVERNMENT SCARY" at them isn't going to work. Not only government scary. People don't understand that snooping e-mail isn't done only by the government, it's also done e.g. by, and for the benefit of, media agencies. The combination of Gmail and Google's bubble alone is enough to limit everyday choices for them, like purchasing things, learning about controversial matters and planning a holiday. Even in the post-Snowden world, most people don't understand that there is a huge audience for personal data besides the NSA, and it has an impact on everyday life beyond scary slogans like surveillance state. > On top of all this, you're pushing encryption as a philosophical measure rather than a practical one. The same can be said of many things that otherwise look idealistic. People are also pushing for widely-available education, or research in fundamental topics like particle phsyics, for what look like "philosophical" reasons rather than practical ones. The gap between "philosophical" and "practical" seems to be one of volume: it's "philosophical" when few enough people understand why it's practically necessary. It's a trait of perception, not an inherent trait of the object, which is why I think it's a matter of education. 30 years ago there seemed to be very little practical value in PCs, too, and anyone pushing for widely available computer use was, at the time, as much philosophical as I am about this today :-). Edit: not that I am denying the gap that exists between implementing purely philosophical principles and implementing purely philosophical principles in a practical way. Linux is, in many ways, less "free" in terms of philosophy than GNU Hurd is. I'll gladly buy a gallon of beer for anyone reading and replying to this post from a computer that runs GNU Hurd.

by weland 12y ago

Karunamon 12y ago

Difficulty is problem #0. PGP is fucking complicated, annoying, and non-user-friendly to use as a computer literate individual that codes for a living. How do you expect the chain-email-forwarding-toolbar-installing-click-here-for-free-smileys average person to understand it, with the knowledge that screwups in encryption land have the very real possibility to render all that work useless? The average person doesn't see the value proposition for going through all that effort. Shouting "GOVERNMENT SCARY" at them isn't going to work. Solving problem 0 would be a massive net benefit for society. You need a cross platform and cross client tool that looks good, is easy enough for my gran to understand, and that does the encryption right. There is no such tool that exists today. The Catch-22 is problem #1, after problem #0. You can encrypt your own stuff all day long, but you aren't emailing encrypted stuff to anyone until a critical mass of people have also gotten past problem #0 long enough to have avoided saying "fuck it" and have distributed their public keys to everyone they know. On top of all this, you're pushing encryption as a philosophical measure rather than a practical one. For more on how pure philosophy holds up when practicality intrudes, look at the free software movement.

weland 12y ago
> PGP is fucking complicated, annoying, and non-user-friendly to use as a computer literate individual that codes for a living. I really don't think it is. Yes, it took me two days or so of reading stuff and chaining commands when I was using mutt. Enigmail is literally point and click. You follow a wizard with three screens or so to set up and all you need to learn after that is how to do the whole web of trust thing. It takes about as much time as it takes to learn Word's stupid track changes mode. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it even easier to use, but it's in a state where it's pretty much useable without being a hacker. > Shouting "GOVERNMENT SCARY" at them isn't going to work. Not only government scary. People don't understand that snooping e-mail isn't done only by the government, it's also done e.g. by, and for the benefit of, media agencies. The combination of Gmail and Google's bubble alone is enough to limit everyday choices for them, like purchasing things, learning about controversial matters and planning a holiday. Even in the post-Snowden world, most people don't understand that there is a huge audience for personal data besides the NSA, and it has an impact on everyday life beyond scary slogans like surveillance state. > On top of all this, you're pushing encryption as a philosophical measure rather than a practical one. The same can be said of many things that otherwise look idealistic. People are also pushing for widely-available education, or research in fundamental topics like particle phsyics, for what look like "philosophical" reasons rather than practical ones. The gap between "philosophical" and "practical" seems to be one of volume: it's "philosophical" when few enough people understand why it's practically necessary. It's a trait of perception, not an inherent trait of the object, which is why I think it's a matter of education. 30 years ago there seemed to be very little practical value in PCs, too, and anyone pushing for widely available computer use was, at the time, as much philosophical as I am about this today :-). Edit: not that I am denying the gap that exists between implementing purely philosophical principles and implementing purely philosophical principles in a practical way. Linux is, in many ways, less "free" in terms of philosophy than GNU Hurd is. I'll gladly buy a gallon of beer for anyone reading and replying to this post from a computer that runs GNU Hurd.