[Cryptography] Help please, considering design of personal CA for PPE

[ianG]

On 24/06/2014 05:02 am, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 8:49 PM, John Kelsey <crypto.jmk at gmail.com
> <mailto:crypto.jmk at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     There's a really fundamental problem somewhere in here.  People
>     forget stuff.  They get old.  They die.  They get Alzheimer's.  They
>     go crazy.  They disappear at sea.
...


Estate planning is first, middle, last a human business .. you can't
really do much with technology except to support the humans that clean
up the mess afterwards.  What do they do?


> I have thought quite a bit about that scenario having had to deal with
> it clearing up estates. There are secrets that might want to be divulged
> after I am gone (details of all my bank accounts, the apartments where I
> keep my mistresses, etc.) And there is information that I want to be
> destroyed.
> 
> One thing I learned from the Web is that it takes people time to get
> used to the technology. We had blogs with comment forms in 1994. They
> didn't really take off till 2000+. Same thing with social networking,
> there were dozens of failed attempts before Facebook.


Same thing with digital cash, we "had it" in the mid 1990s.  Now it is
rebranded as cryptocurrencies and everyone thinks time started in 2009.


> Only some of this is people coming up with the right idea. A big part is
> that people had to get used to hyperlinks and forms before they could
> move on. Web 2.0 was really about rebranding what Web 1.0 was meant to
> be about all along.
> 
> In the short term probably what we need to do is impress on people that
> fear of a warrant is probably less important for most people than losing
> their entire life digital history, photos, documents, etc.


Spot on.  What are the risk calculations here?

    Chance of death?  100%

    Chance of a messy divorce?  30% ?

    Chance of a government abusing your secrets?  1%

Which one do you plan for?


> But for those of us who have had Anna Chapman attend seminars with us...


Not sure about that comment, but the oft-repeated aphorism about liberty
and freedom is true, but only in the aggregate.  Your contribution to
such a cause would typically be indirect;  your contribution to your
family's future wellbeing would be more direct.



iang