On Sunday 03 November 2002 12:53, Len Sassaman wrote: > On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Tim May wrote: > > PK crypto has made a lot of things a lot easier, but expecting it > > all to work with a click of a button is naive. Of course, most of > > us don't actually have secrets which make protocols and efforts > > justifiable. There's the rub. > > I expect it to work with the click of a button. ... > crypto applications *must* be as easy to use as AOL. > > Sacrificing the level of security provided is a reasonable option. ...
Agreed. Setup should be pretty simple, but daily use for the unwashed masses has to be one-click. And version compatibility problems have _got_ to disappear. Actually, PGP's Outlook plug-in comes pretty close to this. It has just two usability shortcomings that I can think of right now: it needs an option to remember the passphrase (yah, it's a security hole, but not as big a one as not using encryption at all); the identification and fetching of other users' keys needs to be simpler (1); and the compatibility problems have _got_ to disappear. Yes, I know I'm repeating myself on that last bit, but it's the biggest show-stopper of the bunch. The receiving side needs to be completely painless. Again, optionally remember the passphrase and optionally automatically decrypt and verify signatures. KMail is pretty good, at least with signatures: it shows a stripe down the side indicating a GPG/PGP message and it checks the signature if the signer is in my keyring. I want copious use of crypto partly out of a slight regard for the interests of the average user but mostly as cover for anything I might want to do. And partly to make harder the lives of the kind of bastards who'd go into a career of looking at other people's mail. 1: I don't have any workable ideas on how to find the right person's key in the face of changing email addresses. But the selection of the particular key from those available for a given person needs to be automated; having to drill down through several levels and then choosing from several possible keys is too confusing and too much work even if it's not confusing. -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel Vote Idiotarian --- it's easier than thinking
