[Cryptography] Microsoft announces new email encryption misfeature?

[Chris]

> On 27 Nov 2013, at 3:03 pm, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
> 
> http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/11/21/introducing-office-365-message-encryption-send-encrypted-emails-to-anyone.aspx
> 
>  We're pleased to announce the upcoming release of Office 365 Message
>  Encryption, a new service that lets you send encrypted emails to
>  people outside your company. No matter what the destination --
>  Outlook.com, Yahoo, Gmail, Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, GroupWise,
>  Squirrel Mail, you name it -- you can send sensitive business
>  communications with an additional level of protection against
>  unauthorized access.
> 


> The user then has to authenticate themselves
>  using a Windows Live or Office 365 ID before content can be
>  decrypted and presented in an Outlook Web App-like interface.  ...
> 
I think this is the crux of it, I think MS have realised they are behind in the ID game. Apple ID, Google ID, Facebook eBay etc. these 'identity management' hooks are being used more and more. 'Use your Facebook ID to log in to our site'.  

I would say this is an attempt to use some of the extra paranoia around recent security revelations to make a land grab for ID. 

When I recently got a new windows tablet and was setting up my machines users, I was horrified that I needed an email address submitted to ms to create a user on 'my' computer  (you can get round this but it is not immediately obvious)

I think that who exactly you are is becoming less important than which node your activities, and money are tied to and which other nodes you interact with. Tying these nodes to an actual person (which one might hope would be important when it's you sitting in jail for someone else's fraud after identity theft) seems to be an after thought. 

Certainly this node based approach makes it easier to get into the big data mining pieces. The notion that the network is as valuable as the node. 

The mind just boggles re the opening strange emails to follow instructions. The doctor example is a good one!

Regards,

Chris