Re:Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior
by higherpurpose on Sunday July 27, 2014 @11:41AM
(#8093027)
What's more important than changing the behavior of "Joe User" is changing the behavior of "Joe IT", who makes the tools "Joe User" uses. Adding end-to-end encryption to highly popular services, making it very easy to use, or even making it all work in the background without "Joe User" even knowing about it, is much more effective and faster than teaching every single Joe Use to use end-to-end encryption.
Imagine if Hangouts and Whatsapp added end-to-end encryption to their services, the way TextSecure works. BOOM - 1 billion people now using end to end encryption, most without even realizing it. That's as "world changing" as it can get, and hopefully, something like this will eventually happen on popular platforms.
Changing the behavior of "Joe Tech Evangelist" is also extremely important. "Joe Tech Evangelist" is basically what caused Chrome to go from 0 percent market share to 50 percent market share (in some stats). Google's advertising of Chrome didn't do nearly as much as every tech guy out there pushing Chrome onto their families and friends, who were still using IE, and some even Firefox.
And if "Joe IT" doesn't make the kind of services that offer really strong encryption and security, he should be very worried "Joe Tech Evangelist" will push users towards the platforms that have it anyway, and (eventually) lose its userbase. But it obviously won't happen overnight, and it also depends on the commitment of "Joe Tech Evangelist" to do this.
Imagine if Hangouts and Whatsapp added end-to-end encryption to their services, the way TextSecure works. BOOM - 1 billion people now using end to end encryption, most without even realizing it. That's as "world changing" as it can get, and hopefully, something like this will eventually happen on popular platforms.
Changing the behavior of "Joe Tech Evangelist" is also extremely important. "Joe Tech Evangelist" is basically what caused Chrome to go from 0 percent market share to 50 percent market share (in some stats). Google's advertising of Chrome didn't do nearly as much as every tech guy out there pushing Chrome onto their families and friends, who were still using IE, and some even Firefox.
And if "Joe IT" doesn't make the kind of services that offer really strong encryption and security, he should be very worried "Joe Tech Evangelist" will push users towards the platforms that have it anyway, and (eventually) lose its userbase. But it obviously won't happen overnight, and it also depends on the commitment of "Joe Tech Evangelist" to do this.