I don't think bad crypto makes the global adversary go "aw, shit, we better target someone else". I think it makes them go "excellent, something else we can get a secret appropriation to go break".
You as an individual cannot fight a state actor. It doesn't matter how secure your crypto is; they can hold a gun to your head and force you to give up the key (or in more civilized countries, throw you in prison forever). If you become an individual target to a state actor, there is literally nothing you can do to stop them unless another state actor is willing to protect you: they have the resources of an entire economy behind them and there's no security solution you can cobble together that will be able to keep them out.
Even Snowden, who practices a paranoid level of OpSec, just assumes his electronic communications are being read. The only reason the CIA hasn't done an extrajuducial rendition on him is that he is living under the protection of another state actor (Russia).
And what really bothers me is that this will give people a false sense of security. At least right now I'm seeing regular folks refraining from exposing sensitive info online out of fear of evil hackers that are often the subject of news. So yes, I think unencrypted email is better than a solution that isn't secure.
Of course for that use-case you don't really need end-to-end encryption: an encrypted connection to the IM server would be fine, and maybe actually better. But a bunch of services don't support that (though Google Talk does).
I trust my government (within reason) at the moment but I'm not comfortable betting that they will never ever turn anti-gay and start coming after me.
That said, crypto is useful in avoiding their gaze in the first place. For this, vulnerable crypto is better than nothing: assuming the vulnerable crypto requires a non-trivial and non-repeatable process to break, it's unlikely that even a state actor is going to bother breaking it for the entire population.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree. I've long thought that using encryption above and beyond what the average person employs would be a great way to appear on 'their' radar. I don't have the need, so I'm happy not trying to find out. That said, if everyone had strong encryption enabled by default, no one would stand out, which I support.
Widely adapted open-source "bad crypto" can: - Raise user's level of awareness about security. - Create a market that can later be serviced by better crypto. - Encourage creation of infrastructure that can be later used in better crypto. - Encourage investigation of better UI.
Also, other poster are right about increasing the difficulty of executing an attack.
You know that study that showed that people wearing seatbelts drive more recklessly, effectively exactly compensating for the increase in safety provided by the seatbelts?
I have a feeling people who think they're using a secure cryptosystem will speak much more freely than those who don't--meaning that the net effect of convincing users to use "bad crypto" is giving the global passive adversary† more interesting morning reading.
† Do we have a name for this guy in cryptography placeholder terms yet? Nathan (the NSA agent), maybe?
Err, the first part of that statement may be true, but I don't think anyone ever put forth a claim backed up by data that they cancelled eachother out. People may drive more recklessly with seatbelts, but the law undoubtedly saved a lot of lives. You may be thinking of motorcycle helmet laws; which seems more plausible given that high-speed motorcycle accidents are much more likely to be fatal regardless.
As for the "global passive adversary", I tend to side with the term "state actor" since the only entities with the power to collect data on that scale are governments as they can legally force every telecom company in their jurisdiction to install taps while keeping their existence classified.
You're probably right about the risk compensation here; with the caveat that anyone who rises above the level of a "common criminal" would simply not trust online communication at all. Islamist terror groups use a known-courier system for all planning and communication because they just assume all electronic communications are being monitored.
I'd rather have that than the society where everyone silently accepts global surveillance as a norm and treats any kind of self-expression that gets you into trouble as pure stupidity on the part of the speaker (e.g. blames the victim).
What we have right now is a vicious cycle. "Normal" people have no cryptographic capabilities. So they simply adapt their beliefs and behavior to this reality. This makes them think of themselves as different from people who do have cryptographic capabilities. This means they develop "us and them" mentality and can no longer empathize with anyone seeking any level of digital privacy. This means there is no popular support for crypto. So "normal" people have no cryptographic capabilities.
I believe that "consumer cryptography", even if it's weak, would break this cycle.
When I ask them to verify their pgp key, it's less easy.
How could the verification of the key be built into the address they give me? Something DNSSEC based I guess.
And you can also get more than one domain, in more than one TLD. Not very practical for automatic verification, but for surviving a manual verification several governments would have to collude against you.
I still think that there must be something better. But I'm probably not good enough to create it.
Also, DNSSEC isn't much more secure than our current CA system.
Do you never leave your collected business cards unattended at a conference or trade fair? Possible, if you put them into your shirt pocket.
Do you store them in a vault lomg-term? Probably not.
Is it impossible to impersonate you, either with a human sound-alike or by voice generation software?
If you want perfect security against everyone, it quickly spirals out of control. You should probably remove the wallpapers in your house regularly and inspect what's underneath. ;-)
I'm not entirely serious here, but I'm surprised at the optimism about what the individual can possibly achieve.
You are missing the part where it was suggested that the recipient of the business card telephones you and asks to verify the fingerprint.
Sorry Tomte for not replying immediately to your message, but I've posted too much on this apparently.
You could do that by printing it on a business card or reading it over the phone, and then the other guy is going to have to type it in somewhere.
The reason trusted third party keeps on coming up, despite all the myriad fundamental problems, is exactly because slinging that around is so unattractive.
Yes, transparent key systems would likely be less secure than PGP. If the usability were significantly better and people used them, that is better than the alternative of using nothing. For many of these solutions, there is a window of vulnerability surrounding the key exchange that closes if you aren't snooping traffic at that moment, so it's not like they're completely insecure options; just that their attack vectors that may be considered acceptable risks in many situations.