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

easy,

[etash]

no. People don't practically care plus they have the memory of a fish.

Re:easy,

[auric_dude]

Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/encrypted-e-mail-how-much-annoyance-will-you-tolerate-to-keep-the-nsa-away/

Re:easy,

[Seumas]

Only a few people even give the slightest fuck about the current revelations, anyway. The distortion field of Slashdot and Reddit (ugh) give the impression that it's the biggest thing in the world and the entire population is angry, but that could not be further from the case. People didn't give a fuck about Echelon. People didn't give a fuck about the DMCA or The USA Patriot Act. They didn't give a fuck about all the signing statements that George Bush put down (basically, when a president goes through a passed bill and writes down little notes essentially saying how he will or won't abide by each part of the bill -- signing statements are how we wound up with authorized torture and claiming the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to Americans -- only to "bad guys"). People don't give a fuck about all the ones Obama has done. People didn't give a fuck about Kevin Mitnick spending many years behind bars without a trial or access to the evidence against him. People don't give a fuck about Gitmo. Whatever fuck people *do* give a damn about right now will be mitigated by the next big distraction coming down the pipe.

Slippery slope doesn't apply to civil liberties and surveillance in America -- but the thing about a slowly warming frying pan sure does.

Re:easy,

[_xeno_]

Yep. If you've been following the news, you'll notice that it's all about catching Snowden, and not about the massive NSA surveillance program. Most people just don't care about it, and the media sure isn't helping by focusing on Snowden to the exclusion of everything else.

I'm sure that ultimately, we'll get some law to "increase oversight on the NSA" that will have no teeth, the NSA will go back to spying on all communications it possibly can, and Snowden will get to discover the true meaning of "extraordinary rendition."

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.

Re:easy,

[hedwards]

The problem with encrypted email is that you can only send it to people who agree that security is important.

And the people causing the loss of my privacy are numb nuts that post pictures of me to FB and various other places without my permission.

Re:easy,

[lister king of smeg]

yes because the nsa would never lie before Congress oh wait they have already been caught lying before Congress twice. I trust encryption far more than I trust the nsa.

Personal encryption tools need a UX overhaul badly

[Wonko the Sane]

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.

Most people CAN'T

[Kazoo the Clown]

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...