Re:encryption, people, encryption!
on
Inside Echelon
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· Score: 1
We have PGP, PGPi, and myriads of other secure email methods. why are people not using them?
That's easy to answer actually. There are a number of reasons. That ultimately boil down to two. Ease of use and poor understanding of the benefits of using it.
Here are a few obstacles to wide acceptance of encryption.
1) People (even relatively smart people) don't really understand how encryption works or how to properly use it. I can count on my fingers the number of close associates I have who would have even a vague clue how to use Public Key encryption and I work with lots of technically competent people.
2) Most people are totally unaware of how insecure email really is. The believe it is secure because they themselves do not know how to read other people's email and it would never occur to them to want to learn how.
3) Even many people who do know how insecure it is do not really care. It's the old, "I've got nothing to hide" problem we are all familiar with. People who do understand the siginifance of encryption and promote its use are marginalized as "paranoid conspiracy freaks".
4) Encryption is not built into the email tools we use in a seamless manner. Face it, encryption requires extra work to use right now. People want software that requires less work for them. If encryption is to become widespread, it needs to be implemented in a manner that does not create extra work to use or at the least provides an obvious benefit for doing the work. For better or worse, most folks simply don't believe the benefits are worth the trouble right now.
5) Most folks simply aren't interested because they perceive the benefits as being of marginal value. They do not understand the full ramifications of their use of technology and probably never will.
Encryption will never become widely used until becomes a seamless part of the tools we use. It has to be so easy as to be useable by people who will not understand what is happening. You may think it is easy to use now. You would be wrong. Right the difference in ease of use between what it is and what it needs to be is similar to the difference in ease of use between using MS Word and TeX. (no snide comment about Word, there is a reason Word is given to secretaries and TeX isn't)
Ask yourself this. Could you explain to your computer illiterate mother how to use encryption and why it is important with a reasonable expectation that she would understand it? I seriously doubt it. I don't think most people even think about the real reasons why we use envelopes for snail mail.
If you want to know why it hasn't caught on, that is basically why. It isn't easy enough to use and people don't understand (or care) why it is important. Make it easy enough to use and make the benefits obvious (a nice dialog box asking "Do you want your message to be sent securely?", etc) even for people who might not really understand it and you'll see it get adopted. (and probably see the assorted law enforcement agencies have a fit of apoplexy but that's another issue:-) )
We use SGI machines where I work and frankly we have been slowly getting rid of them. Why? Except on the very high end, PC's are faster and cheaper. You can buy a PC for about $8000 right now that is faster than an Onyx/2 with InfiniteReality graphics. I know because we did just that. Granted, the Onyx/2 is >2.5 years old but it cost 30 times as much when new. The Onyx/3 will take the lead back for a time and nothing in the PC world can compare to a high end multi-pipe Onyx/Origin even today on raw performance numbers but SGI still is loosing ground to the PC makers. Their performance edge just isn't large enough to come anywhere close to justifying the huge mark up in price for their machines. Only people that buy them are people at the very high end of the market who don't really have much of a choice right now.
Don't get me wrong, I love SGI's machines and use one daily. Even passed up on a faster PC (running Windows) because I like it so much. But there is no way I could cost justify getting a new one. They simply do not provide enough performance to justify the cost anymore. All the demos of their stuff we've seen doesn't indicate that their new machines are a huge leap in performance. (meaningfully faster to be sure but not nearly enough to justify the cost of a new one) Fortunately for SGI they make a ton of money on each Onyx & Origin they sell but if they aren't careful this could easily evaporate out from under them. They make very cool systems but it is not a well run business IMO. I'll be somewhat suprised if SGI doesn't get bought out by someone in the next year or two.
What I want to know is why do small aircraft still use leaded gas.
Two basic reasons really. First is that there hasn't been a new engine design in quite a while. Economic reasons mostly since these companies have been struggling and engine design is expensive. The engines used in small planes aren't much changed in the last 40 years from what I understand.
The second is that airplanes wouldn't use catalytic converters like cars do. The only reason cars switched over is because leaded fuel destroys catalytic converters so when the legislation was passed mandating cat's on every car, they also made the refining companies switch to unleaded fuel at the same time. Without the cat, we'd probably still have lead in our gas today.
I live in NYC, i ride the train to and from work every day, it's fast, cheap, and efficient, a marvel of engineering. It's only fast in a high population density area. They are only cheap when you live in a place that already has one. When i visit my parents in CT, however, you can't do a thing without a car. Now, of course, people outside of cities *could* constrcut decent mass transit, but they don't, and that's fine -- it's a lifestyle choice based on perceived convenience and, to some degree, an archaic sense that one's car contributes to one's identity. But it's a lifestyle *choice*, and when the price of gas goes up and this causes what were, essentially, forseeable economic impacts, what am i supposed to do, cry? Economic realities and historical infrastructure choices dictate that mass transit system are impractical for much of the country. In NYC there is sufficient population density to viably support a subway system. There simply are not enough people where I live to support one and there already is an already installed alternative. Is it better? Probably not but it doesn't matter either because it isn't going to change anytime soon. Mass transit has forseeable economic impacts too, just different ones is all. As for your lifestyle choice comment the only lifestyle choice is that I choose not to live in a large city. The reasons I choose that have nothing to do with automobiles. Cities (especially NYC) are dirty, poluted, crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous, and usually ugly places to live. Of course suburbia (which is most of the US these days) has it's drawbacks too. They also both have their positive features. Which is better? That's up to you.
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That's easy to answer actually. There are a number of reasons. That ultimately boil down to two. Ease of use and poor understanding of the benefits of using it.
Here are a few obstacles to wide acceptance of encryption.
1) People (even relatively smart people) don't really understand how encryption works or how to properly use it. I can count on my fingers the number of close associates I have who would have even a vague clue how to use Public Key encryption and I work with lots of technically competent people.
2) Most people are totally unaware of how insecure email really is. The believe it is secure because they themselves do not know how to read other people's email and it would never occur to them to want to learn how.
3) Even many people who do know how insecure it is do not really care. It's the old, "I've got nothing to hide" problem we are all familiar with. People who do understand the siginifance of encryption and promote its use are marginalized as "paranoid conspiracy freaks".
4) Encryption is not built into the email tools we use in a seamless manner. Face it, encryption requires extra work to use right now. People want software that requires less work for them. If encryption is to become widespread, it needs to be implemented in a manner that does not create extra work to use or at the least provides an obvious benefit for doing the work. For better or worse, most folks simply don't believe the benefits are worth the trouble right now.
5) Most folks simply aren't interested because they perceive the benefits as being of marginal value. They do not understand the full ramifications of their use of technology and probably never will.
Encryption will never become widely used until becomes a seamless part of the tools we use. It has to be so easy as to be useable by people who will not understand what is happening. You may think it is easy to use now. You would be wrong. Right the difference in ease of use between what it is and what it needs to be is similar to the difference in ease of use between using MS Word and TeX. (no snide comment about Word, there is a reason Word is given to secretaries and TeX isn't)
Ask yourself this. Could you explain to your computer illiterate mother how to use encryption and why it is important with a reasonable expectation that she would understand it? I seriously doubt it. I don't think most people even think about the real reasons why we use envelopes for snail mail.
If you want to know why it hasn't caught on, that is basically why. It isn't easy enough to use and people don't understand (or care) why it is important. Make it easy enough to use and make the benefits obvious (a nice dialog box asking "Do you want your message to be sent securely?", etc) even for people who might not really understand it and you'll see it get adopted. (and probably see the assorted law enforcement agencies have a fit of apoplexy but that's another issue :-) )
Don't get me wrong, I love SGI's machines and use one daily. Even passed up on a faster PC (running Windows) because I like it so much. But there is no way I could cost justify getting a new one. They simply do not provide enough performance to justify the cost anymore. All the demos of their stuff we've seen doesn't indicate that their new machines are a huge leap in performance. (meaningfully faster to be sure but not nearly enough to justify the cost of a new one) Fortunately for SGI they make a ton of money on each Onyx & Origin they sell but if they aren't careful this could easily evaporate out from under them. They make very cool systems but it is not a well run business IMO. I'll be somewhat suprised if SGI doesn't get bought out by someone in the next year or two.
I know, I know, it's the engineer in me. I can't help myself...
Two basic reasons really. First is that there hasn't been a new engine design in quite a while. Economic reasons mostly since these companies have been struggling and engine design is expensive. The engines used in small planes aren't much changed in the last 40 years from what I understand.
The second is that airplanes wouldn't use catalytic converters like cars do. The only reason cars switched over is because leaded fuel destroys catalytic converters so when the legislation was passed mandating cat's on every car, they also made the refining companies switch to unleaded fuel at the same time. Without the cat, we'd probably still have lead in our gas today.
I live in NYC, i ride the train to and from work every day, it's fast, cheap, and efficient, a marvel of engineering. It's only fast in a high population density area. They are only cheap when you live in a place that already has one. When i visit my parents in CT, however, you can't do a thing without a car. Now, of course, people outside of cities *could* constrcut decent mass transit, but they don't, and that's fine -- it's a lifestyle choice based on perceived convenience and, to some degree, an archaic sense that one's car contributes to one's identity. But it's a lifestyle *choice*, and when the price of gas goes up and this causes what were, essentially, forseeable economic impacts, what am i supposed to do, cry? Economic realities and historical infrastructure choices dictate that mass transit system are impractical for much of the country. In NYC there is sufficient population density to viably support a subway system. There simply are not enough people where I live to support one and there already is an already installed alternative. Is it better? Probably not but it doesn't matter either because it isn't going to change anytime soon. Mass transit has forseeable economic impacts too, just different ones is all. As for your lifestyle choice comment the only lifestyle choice is that I choose not to live in a large city. The reasons I choose that have nothing to do with automobiles. Cities (especially NYC) are dirty, poluted, crowded, noisy, sometimes dangerous, and usually ugly places to live. Of course suburbia (which is most of the US these days) has it's drawbacks too. They also both have their positive features. Which is better? That's up to you.