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EFF Begins a Campaign For Secure and Usable Cryptography

Posted by Soulskill on from the hard-problems-to-solve dept.

Peter Eckersley writes: Over at EFF we just launched our Secure Messaging Scorecard, which is the first phase in a campaign to promote the development of communications protocols that are genuinely secure and usable by ordinary people. The Scorecard evaluates communications software against critical minimum standards for what a secure messaging app should look like; subsequent phases are planned to examine real world usability, metadata protection, protocol openness, and involve a deeper look at the security of the leading candidates. Right now, we don't think the Internet has any genuinely usable, genuinely secure messaging protocols — but we're hoping to encourage tech companies and the open source community to starting closing that gap.

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This eff effort validates my understanding that FaceTime and iMessage are the most secure protocols that you've heard of and are not tinfoil hat protocols. Apple is committed to the privacy of its users where other companies are not (likely to have something to advertise against).

    1. Re:Apple by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FaceTime and iMessage are the most secure protocols that you've heard of

      Don't you mean that you've heard of?

      I mean, "that you've heard of" is the entire purpose of the EFF post. There are more than a dozen protocols that are more secure than Facetime and iMessage. That's the point of the chart - to show people there are better alternatives.

      If you can look at that chart and still think those two are your best bets, then you probably don't really care that much about security.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Re:Timeline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Getting grandma and cousin alex to use it is actually very simple.

    Can they use Imessage? sure they can!.
    What if all of Imessage's backend systems were secure end to end.
    Woudlnt change the look and feel, would certainly change the underlying security.

    Getting platform vendors to adopt it is certainly the hard part.

  3. Pony Up People by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This reminds me, It's time to send my quarterly donation to EFF. They represent my interests better than any other political organization. And, they're more effective.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. missing from the Scorecard by swell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "usable by ordinary people"

    We would have had encrypted communications long ago if PGP, etc were usable by ordinary people. The Scorecard is a good start in evaluating the security of different systems, but there is no effort whatsoever to evaluate usability.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...