Ask Slashdot: Will the NSA Controversy Drive People To Use Privacy Software? 393
Nerval's Lobster writes "As the U.S. government continues to pursue former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for leaking some of the country's most sensitive intelligence secrets, the debate over federal surveillance seems to have abated somewhat — despite Snowden's stated wish for his revelations to spark transformative and wide-ranging debate, it doesn't seem as if anyone's taking to the streets to protest the NSA's reported monitoring of Americans' emails and phone-call metadata. Even so, will the recent revelations about the NSA cause a spike in demand for sophisticated privacy software, leading to a glut of new apps that vaporize or encrypt data? While there are quite a number of tools already on the market (SpiderOak, Silent Circle, and many more), is their presence enough to get people interested enough to install them? Or do you think the majority of people simply don't care? Despite some polling data that suggests people are concerned about their privacy, software for securing it is just not an exciting topic for most folks, who will rush to download the latest iteration of Instagram or Plants vs. Zombies, but who often throw up their hands and profess ignorance when asked about how they lock down their data."
easy, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:easy, (Score:5, Informative)
Personal encryption tools need a UX overhaul badly (Score:5, Informative)
I made a tutorial [youtube.com] designed to help non tech-savvy people set up usable email encryption and even with the best narrator and script it's still terrible.
There are way too many steps involved, and in spite of how radically the usability has improved over the last decade or so it's still not at all user friendly. Default values are set poorly; things that should be completely automated and happen transparently in the background, like keyserver operations, require manual intervention.
It's almost enough to make me suspect a consipracy to keep these tools out of the reach of the average user, but realistically I suspect (unproductive) laziness combine with a lack of empathy for non-experts is the real culprit.
Re:Is it even worth it? (Score:4, Informative)
The more people that encrypted trivial bullshit, the more they need to store and the longer it'll take them to crack it at any point in the future. And the less likely it is that they'll be able to pay attention to everybody.
Remember, the time it takes them to crack thousands of LOL cat videos is time they don't have to crack things we actually care about.
Re:easy, (Score:3, Informative)