Re:CIA Director John Brennan Pretends Foreign Cryptography D...
by sametmax on Tuesday June 21, 2016 @02:08PM
(#11947941)
I agree. Although this generally cause another problem: people start reacting over fear or habits, not because they become conscious of the problem. Which means:
- if the problem take another form, they won't act;
- if the solution needs to be adapted, they won't do it;
- when the problem doesn't exist anymore, or your understanding of the problem is very different and you realize you fought the wrong battle, it will be impossible to realocate the ressource to it. Worst, you will get discriminated if you do.
All in all, education is good, but as long as people don't generally care about the way the world works, no matter the specifi subject, it will be fighting a never ending battle.
This isn't just a consumer encryption problem, this is the infosec community's fight in a nutshell. To put it simply: risk is invisible.
This is why projects such as the EFF's scorecard ( https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard ) are incredibly important, possibly more-so than the actual code various applications implement. Because without public awareness there is no incentive for companies to implement non-trivial encryption features.
To look at it another way, we're fighting a public health battle here and we should borrow the lessons they've learned. You don't eradicate Dracunculiasis by assigning a doctor to look over every person's shoulder -- you educate people that {behavior} causes {invisible thing} causes {problem}. And once people know why, they're empowered to help themselves.