[liberationtech] 15 years later, why can't Johnny still not encrypt?

[Mrs. Y.]

I actually had to teach reporters to use email encryption. Thunderbird
portable app on Ironkey with enigmail plugin. This was prior to Enigmail
panty-twisting privacy leak.

It was painful. Not because they were stupid, but because it's still so
convoluted.

On 1/16/14 9:51 AM, coderman wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:20 AM, Mrs. Y.
> <networksecurityprincess at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> http://www.edge.org/conversation/smart-heuristics-gerd-gigerenzer
> 
> 
> your caloric heuristic optimization,
>  is my bug.
>   (now if only we could patch wetware! ;)
> 
> 
> Tempest: perhaps we should clarify incentives.  Johnny has zero
> incentive in the modern social world to use crypto, and high barriers
> to any interest that does occur.
> 
> journalists and human rights workers are motivated like never before,
> and likely more sophisticated.  however they still struggle with
> technical tools for strong privacy.
> 
> my challenge was to the cypherpunks list for digital monies; favorable
> selection if there ever was!  yet still not 100% and some contexts
> place severe penalties on even a single, innocent failure.
> 
> 
> 
> as for the title and research, it does not imply encryption is useless
> and should be abandoned.  it does imply that casual, less technical
> users (Johnny) need a system which is intuitive, fails safe, and
> unambiguously expressive about failures.
> 
> any improvement to usability is useful.  we certainly need much
> improvement for pervasively employed end-to-end privacy.
> 
> 
> 
> best regards,
>