[Cryptography] Boing Boing pushing an RSA Conference boycott

[Bear]

On Mon, 2014-01-13 at 14:16 -0500, Kent Borg wrote:
> On 01/13/2014 10:23 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> > Unless someone shows evidence that RSA actually knew they were being
> > punked, the boycott makes no sense. 

> If we can't make selling security pay, we can maybe make selling 
> insecurity cost.  There are a lot of other suits watching this, seeing 
> how RSA fairs.  I want them to see something gruesome, something that 
> worries them.  (The same way I want a banker or two who nearly dumped us 
> into DEPRESSION to go to jail, so others will think twice.)

I tend to agree.  If RSA doesn't go down in flames over its utter 
failure, then people will learn from that fact that security is a 
joke industry.  That's a problem we already have badly enough with 
the failure after failure after failure revealed by the Snowdon
files.

I don't think that there is any real hope of building a secure 
infrastructure for the world if the world learns by this example 
that an industry leading security company can completely fail in 
its primary mission without consequence.  

That would be a vote of no confidence in the entire security 
industry, like an acknowledgement that there can never be security 
and there's no point in even trying. 

That said, I don't think a conference boycott is specific enough. 
A conference boycott hurts everyone at the conference.  And most 
of them have not been complicit (or merely incompetent, which is 
nearly as bad) in betrayal of the public.