Re: [openpgp] Manifesto - who is the new OpenPGP for?

[Tim Bray <[e-mail]>]

You guys are taking it as axiomatic that a high-quality UX can't be
provided for users of OpenPGP.  Used OpenKeychain recently? Not quite there
yet, but I think your axiom is looking a little shaky.
On Mar 26, 2015 12:34 PM, "ianG" <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 25/03/2015 00:30 am, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 2015-03-25 at 00:17 +0000, ianG wrote:
>>
>>> I think differently - I think a system that doesn't target the masses is
>>> doomed.
>>>
>> Any proofs for this?
>>
>
> Yup.
>
>  OpenPGP (probably not targeted for the masses)
>>          => still okay and secure
>>
>
> PGP - pretty good privacy - was targetted at the command line masses of
> the pre-web Internet of 1992.  Still ok, still secure, but ...
>
> The definition of the masses has moved on.  OpenPGP no longer targets the
> masses.  And, in my view, unless something good comes out of the current
> Yahoo-google-friends partnership, will slowly fade.
>
>
>  X.509 (absolutely targeted for the masses)
>>          => inherently broken (unless of course one trusts the Mozilla
>>             CAs, e.g. turktrust and CNNIC O:-) )
>>
>
> No.  It never targetted the masses.  They only tell you in their marketing
> that it's "for the masses" so as to appease the browsers which have users
> as clients.  You bought that because they kept saying it so many times they
> believe it themselves.  But no.  x.509/PKI/CAs are for the corporates.
>
> x.509 is irrelevant for privacy, expecially of the PGP variety.  And in
> the pre-web telco 1980s days the fixed-line masses, it was never intended
> to be a privacy system, but an anti-privacy system.  It was intended to map
> the world's population for the exploitation and control by the world's
> telcos, being national champions and in bed with governments and intel.
>
>
>  XMPP (*intended* for the masses, but basically failed (actually, mostly
>>       thanks to the big players and greedy companies like wotzapp)
>>       => well, at least people have their freedom
>>
>
> Hmmm, I don't know why it failed.  It didn't fail because of the *zapp
> companies, they simply did a better job.  Yes, I agree that the players
> wrote things like OTR as privacy, but I would agree that essentially they
> failed, it's another lesson.  Let's learn from it.
>
>
>
>  Skype,Hangouts,Wotzapp (targeted for the masses, backed as such by the
>>                          big players)
>>
>
> Yup.
>
>
>                          => people completely surrender to the vendors and
>>                            their conditions (and don't these typically
>>                            even include that the vendor may do basically
>>                            anything he likes with the data, including
>>                            selling it?)
>>
>
> Right.  So let's take google mail.  google's meta is data data data. All
> your data are belong us.  Which meant that google had conflicted
> inventives, which got sliced open by NSA.  Hence today's story.  Hence, I
> have difficulty in saying that google are PGP people in the sense of pretty
> good privacy - who we are on this list are about.
>
> Skype I would say were much more our sort of people, until they sold to
> ebay.  Then their new masters had ... different ideas, but that story has
> never been told in public, so let's not get distracted.
>
>
>
> But back to your question:  do we need to target the masses to survive?
> Yes.  Skype, google, Whatsapp, snapchat, Facebook, Apple iMessage, etc are
> still all in business and are providing revenues, and they provided what
> privacy they did as a secondary to delivering a revenue-generating service
> to the masses.  Absolutely.
>
> Whereas the PGP community took the old 1992 model of privacy absolutism,
> and found that their brief spurt of success in building a community around
> key signing parties and so forth ... was steamrollered by the wider
> onslaught of the open web.
>
>
>
> iang
>
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