[Cryptography] upgrade mechanisms and policies

Benjamin Kreuter brk7bx at virginia.edu
Thu Apr 16 09:16:30 EDT 2015


On Wed, 2015-04-15 at 21:37 -0700, Ryan Carboni wrote:
> I mean, for instance. Do you think this email should be encrypted, or
> simply authentificated?

Suppose a tyrant rises to power a few decades from now, and starts
purging anyone who ever criticized him.  Suppose that tyrant is
currently a local politician in your town.  You probably would regret
sending unencrypted messages in which you call him a moron -- even more
so if the messages were authenticated.

My point is that deciding what is "important enough to encrypt" is
awfully difficult.  We should instead be focusing on reducing the costs
and inconvenience of encryption, so that we do not have to sit around
wondering whether or not something is "worth encrypting."  This is
nothing new but we have a long way to go and progress has been a bit
slow.
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