[ih] question re. early adoption of email

[Ted Faber]

On 04/30/2016 05:09 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Ted Faber
> 
>     > Yes, there is something joyful in the fact that those are HTTPS links...
> 
> Oh, you don't want to get me started on HTTPS.

Evidently not.

We have met, right?  You understand that there's no way I was suggesting
that applying a third layer encryption protocol linked to an opaque,
application-provider controlled key management infrastructure wasn't
full of holes that an interested private party could take advantage of
without even putting the resources of a nation-state into the discussion?

I pretty keenly understand what an https web server gets you and what it
doesn't.

My joy was based on the fact that the fidonet.org web site is actively
enough maintained that it supports protocols that were just a twinkle in
protocol designers' eyes when that organization began moving bits wholesale.


> Never mind! Everyone turning on mandatory HTTPS on their server, refusing to
> even deign to talk to you without it, can sleep the oblivious sleep of the
> morally superior, rigidly secure in the knowledge that they have done their
> bit in the crucial fight of out time, to protect privacy and human rights.
> ... Or something like that.

Um, yeah.

Sanctimony and technical misunderstandings make a pretty potent brew.

All we can do is try to get people to tone down the former and eradicate
the latter.  That's not exactly a short simple path, either.  I try to
take some solace in the notion that their often crackpot screeds at
least mean that they're thinking about the issues.


-- 
http://www.lunabase.org/~faber
http://www.lunabase.org/~faber/blog

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