Ask Slashdot: Will the NSA Controversy Drive People To Use Privacy Software?

Nerval's Lobster writes "As the U.S. government continues to pursue former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for leaking some of the country's most sensitive intelligence secrets, the debate over federal surveillance seems to have abated somewhat — despite Snowden's stated wish for his revelations to spark transformative and wide-ranging debate, it doesn't seem as if anyone's taking to the streets to protest the NSA's reported monitoring of Americans' emails and phone-call metadata. Even so, will the recent revelations about the NSA cause a spike in demand for sophisticated privacy software, leading to a glut of new apps that vaporize or encrypt data? While there are quite a number of tools already on the market (SpiderOak, Silent Circle, and many more), is their presence enough to get people interested enough to install them? Or do you think the majority of people simply don't care? Despite some polling data that suggests people are concerned about their privacy, software for securing it is just not an exciting topic for most folks, who will rush to download the latest iteration of Instagram or Plants vs. Zombies, but who often throw up their hands and profess ignorance when asked about how they lock down their data."

Comments

Re:easy,

[hairyfeet]

The correct answer is zero, zero annoyance. as somebody who works with the normal folks 6 days a week i can tell you a shitload of them already just blast their entire existence onto their FB page anyway, and if having everything encrypted wasn't "clicky clicky" simple or actually cost a cent compared to your Gmails and Yahoo mails? Not gonna happen, they just won't use it.

And of course the bigger bitch is that for most of this software to work you have to get both parties on it so you are stuck with a network effect to where YOU can be encrypted but it won't matter because nobody you know will go to the trouble to use the software so you won't be talking to anyone anyway.