A world without trust is not better – by @dhh

https://world.hey.com/dhh/a-world-without-trust-is-not-better-93d1c7b5

@jsparknz @aral He gives zero support for his thesis. Of course the best case is absence of need for trust. Trust /is/ risk. There's nothing favorable about that. If you must trust, then lots of factors come into play and turn a straight-forward decision into a fuzzy one. It's better for your email payload to be PGP-encrypted so you don't need trust vs hoping the MitMs don't exploit.

@aral @jsparknz @resist1984 PGP isn’t a great example of good risk management. Email simply isn’t meant to send sensitive information and PGP is a cumbersome attempt at covering what is a design choice.

See latacora.micro.blog/2020/02/19… but if @dhh argument didn’t land, I doubt this will touch you.

Ultimately, technology cannot and will not solve social problems.

@hypolite @jsparknz @aral I fully reject the "this wasn't meant for that" line of reasoning. Magnetrons were meant for radar not microwave ovens, but one day someone realised magnatrons can be used to cook food. We don't reject a usa case because it doesn't match original intent.

@aral @jsparknz @hypolite When you realize the separation of duties, that email is a means to get data from A to B & crypto serves to mitigate disclosure, then of course email /can/ be used to move a payload without disclosure. It doesn't matter that email predates PGP. PGP over email is cumbersome for many novices with some implementations, but there are exceptions, but this is red herring territory.

@hypolite @jsparknz @aral #Hushmail came close enough to solving the social problem. A novice can open a HM acct as easily as a Yahoo acct. An external expert user can do all the key management on hushtools.com. And for me that worked. I was able to get accountants & lawyers to use crypto effectively. Novice-to-novice => HM-to-HM. BTW, the latacora.micro.blog link is dead for me.

@hypolite If you look at the 10k foot view of my point, you need not accept PGP email. That example muddied the waters. I could have more simply stated: we don't discard encryption in favor of trusting those who see the payload. It's better to use encrytion because it removes some componts of needed trust. I see no case for increasing the need for trust.