News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist. Parent comment

Re:Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist by willis936 on Monday September 06, 2021 @12:03PM (#28435048)
In your job as an intermediary would it be reasonable to roll your own email servers? If done properly then you wouldn't have to trust anyone and could give instructions to your clients on how to produce and use their own private keys. Commercial mail providers don't offer this option for some (likely legal) reason, but if you're willing to share risk with the activists then I think it would be worthwhile.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist by shapefrog on Monday September 06, 2021 @01:31PM (#28435994)
> could give instructions to your clients on how to produce and use their own private keys

PGP has been around since 1991, if it was as easy as writing a catchy how to, then some people might use it. Now 30 years in, basically nobody uses it. Got to wonder why ...

> don't offer this option for some (likely legal) reason

Not at all, they dont do it because it is a terrible customer experience. It is confusing, it is hard, if you lose a key, your data is garbage. If you make a copy of your key, you are not secure. Some people are happy to go that path, most are not.

If only it was so simple. Imagine a world where Gmail launched, but if you forgot your password, boom, all your email is gone as is access to your email address. The next company that came along and offered 'password resets' would have wiped them out.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist by listenallyall on Monday September 06, 2021 @03:22PM (#28437017)
> if you forgot your password, boom, all your email is gone as is access to your email address

Replace "email" with "Bitcoin"

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clarifications regarding arrest of climate activist by willis936 on Monday September 06, 2021 @03:31PM (#28437101)
Those are all benefits when your goal is discrete communication: which is exactly what we're discussing.
[ Parent | on HN ]