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Schneier: Everyone Wants You To Have Security, But Not From Them
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier has written another insightful piece about the how modern tech companies treat security. He points out that most organizations will tell you to secure your data while at the same time asking to be exempt from that security. Google and Facebook want your data to be safe — on their servers so they can analyze it. The government wants you to encrypt your communications — as long as they have the keys. Schneier says, "... we give lots of companies access to our data because it makes our lives easier. ... The reason the Internet is a worldwide mass-market phenomenon is that all the technological details are hidden from view. Someone else is taking care of it. We want strong security, but we also want companies to have access to our computers, smart devices, and data. We want someone else to manage our computers and smart phones, organize our e-mail and photos, and help us move data between our various devices. ... We want our data to be secure, but we want someone to be able to recover it all when we forget our password. We'll never solve these security problems as long as we're our own worst enemy.
What he means to say is what most of have known in our darkest heart of hearts since the first help ticket: The vast majority of users are technically illiterate idiots, and you can't fix stupid.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
That's not what he said at all. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you substantially, but that's completely separate from the actual point of the piece.
It's all about the fact that, in order to do many or most of the things we want to do today, we have no choice but to give someone access to our data—but that almost everyone we could give that access to wants to (ab)use it to make money.
More importantly, that's even true of those who actually want to help keep our data secure from others—even our governments.
The fact that there is really no major entity working to keep our data safe for ourselves and ourselves alone—and that there are so many, even those that theoretically should be trying to do so, working directly against that end—is definitely something we need to be concerned about, far beyond simply bemoaning the stupidity of all the "lusers" who will happily give away their data for free because they just don't know any better.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
A great thought, that--especially when set to some fine blues:
Everybody wants to hear the truth
But yet, everybody wants to tell a lie
I say everybody wants to hear the truth
But still they all want to tell a lie
Oh everybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
Albert King
The fact that there is really no major entity working to keep our data safe for ourselves and ourselves alone
Apple does this. Look at HealthKit for example, all data is stored locally, Apple doesn't mine it. They allow you to control who has what access to specific parts of the data.
It's not exactly true of all data, but Apple tries to give you specific control of data where it can.
The reason why Apple does this and other companies do not is simple - Apple actually makes money selling hardware. Google and Facebook have no revenue except what they can extract from you data, so they have totally different motivations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley