Comment by setpatchaddress
4 years ago
Unrealistic. My non-tech family and friends don’t care about this, and I can’t make them care. They don’t understand why it’s a problem; they agree with the motive and don’t understand that it’s not actually a solvable problem. It’s not totally dissimilar to the crypto backdoor problem. Normies think it’s great for only the feds to break encryption. Doesn’t work that way, but you can’t explain why to someone who doesn’t want to know.
The only progress for things like this comes at the political level, through pressure on politicians or corporations. That’s where you should be spending effort if this sort of thing matters to you.
A few Linux nerds buying some fantasy spook-free glibertarian phone will not make a dent in the problem.
I have a different experience. My normie family and friends don't want a private company to access private media at all. Tech-illiteracy is no question of education and intelligence. This is a topic that is comparable to home searches.
Still good to keep up the pressure on public officials. That any interior minister is very happy about that doesn't have to be excused. Anyone else should be more like French people.
Perhaps as I stated it, yeah it seems unrealistic.
However I do think there’s value in gentle, consistent evangelism of privacy in ways that don’t make people feel bad. Most folks actually don’t want their deeply private stuff to be accessible. I’ve found that there are good analogies and ways to think about it that folks can get on board with and start caring to some extent.
I absolutely agree that political progress is the ultimate solution. I think the only way that will happen is if enough people demand it.
A good start would be for the government to stop trying to bully tech companies into compromising on their privacy.