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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."
no. People don't practically care plus they have the memory of a fish.
I made a tutorial designed to help non tech-savvy people set up usable email encryption and even with the best narrator and script it's still terrible.
There are way too many steps involved, and in spite of how radically the usability has improved over the last decade or so it's still not at all user friendly. Default values are set poorly; things that should be completely automated and happen transparently in the background, like keyserver operations, require manual intervention.
It's almost enough to make me suspect a consipracy to keep these tools out of the reach of the average user, but realistically I suspect (unproductive) laziness combine with a lack of empathy for non-experts is the real culprit.
I'm in IT and I can't figure out the gibberish that passes for documentation on open source security products. Without exception, they presume you already undrstand the issues, or they explain them badly...
Most of the comments I have seen here have been depressingly (and unjustifiably, IMO) negative.
I think it is obvious that people are becoming more concerned about privacy, now that they see how much of it they have inadvertently allowed to be taken from them.
I only hope that when they start using "privacy protection measures", they don't forget to fight against the reason they need to: abusive assholes (at least half of whom seem to be in government).
several non-tech folks have stopped communicating with me except for face-to-face, simply because they don't want the government to read our conversations. my text and emails have gotten very matter-of-fact ever since the snowden revelations leaked.
as a result, i've been researching the available encryption resources out there so we can actually have private conversations without worry. there aren't many that are really simple to use and actually effective. i'm talking with a friend about setting up a home server we can VPN into for chat sessions until there's a workable solution for non-tech types.
i've wanted to do this for a while, but no one else around me cared. now they care.
Why would the average person give a fuck about their privacy? Most people have nothing to hide, and unless they are a fanatic or a hobbyist, they could not care less who reads their stuff.
This security stuff is NOT about the average guy, though. It's about movers and shakers... politicians, lawyers, businessmen, members of the media... people who have power in some ways to affect change, and who communicate in ways which REQUIRE privacy.
Likewise, the NSA monitoring the average person does not matter in the least. It is about them monitoring movers and shakers. It's about people who could potentially upset the powers that be.
So cut me a break with the ruminations about whether Joe Six Pack or Susy Soccer Mom is going to encrypt their email. The real question will be, will the next candidate for high office, who aims to shake things up, and who thinks the current Republicratic overlords need to GTFO... the question is... will he us it, and will he continue to be monitored.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Yep. And, regarding your "even if they do not decrypt it", I can't help quoting one of my favourite books on security: "The main problem facing the worldâ(TM)s signals intelligence agencies is traffic selection â" how to filter out interesting nuggets from the mass of international phone, fax, email and other traffic. A terrorist who helpfully encrypts his important traffic does this part of the policeâ(TM)s job for them. If the encryption algorithm used is breakable, or if the end systems can be hacked, then the net result is worse than if the traffic had been sent in clear." (See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-c09.pdf p31)
VKh
We are the problem not the end user.
We have failed to provide basic communication infrastructure that protects the end user.
Expecting people to use optional add-on technology requiring x additional software and y additional knowledge is obviously not going to happen regardless of how small x and y can be made.
The only way to fix the problem is wholesale replacement of existing bullshit (e.g. SMTP) with a solution that is secure by default. Users simply must not have the choice of skipping rational and meaningful key exchange steps before communication. It can be made easy or hard to give users control of the security tradeoff but it must not be optional.