[ih] email at scale

[paul vixie]

On 5/14/2012 1:24 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 5/14/2012 12:43 AM, paul vixie wrote:
>> the people who are willing to put that much effort into their e-mail
>> communications are few and far between. we can build for utility at
>> scale, or privacy and authenticity at scale, but not both.
>
> I think we do not have an existence proof for privacy and authenticity
> at scale.

i would have said that your messaging work at compuserve qualified as
such, dave. in fact that was one of the visions in my head when spoke
the words, 'walled garden'.

> ...
> A common view is that good security cannot be easy to use.  It might
> even be true.

i know that incompatibility, i just think in the other direction.
anything that's easy for a human to use will also be easy for all of the
malware infesting that human's devices to use. (and thus, neither secure
nor securable). something that's easy for way-way-way-smarter humans
(for example, my kids and their friends) is likely to borderline
unusable by me (and maybe even by dave). the tension is, as one ratchets
up the minimum skill level required then security goes up but utility
(by definition) goes down.

anyway this isn't history (sadly).

paul

-- 
"I suspect I'm not known as a font of optimism." (VJS, 2012)