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Comment by Chardok | Hacker News Reader

"Opting out doesn’t work. It’s nonsense to tell people not to carry a credit card or not to have an email address. And “buyer beware” is putting too much onus on the individual. People don’t test their food for pathogens or their airlines for safety."

This is a brilliant line and it works so well because he is absolutely right: it should not be on the burden of the consumer to make sure their products are safe, be it from listeria or a spy device disguised as a children's toy.

I don't know what needs to happen for people to get outraged, but privacy needs to be a mainstream political issue. Perhaps we need to see what Google and Facebook actually have on us...

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The comparison that Bruce Schneider makes is not correct.

Governments are likely to control food pathogens and airline risks because they need living, productive, happy voters.

But governments have also a fundamental distrust for all individuals and therefore want as much surveillance as possible. By allowing big companies to collect that, they have access as well.

Therefore I think governments are not motivated to improve privacy at all. On the contrary.

Governments care about food pathogens because ultimately they are held accountable by the people. They are not a malignant force, parasitic on society. Governments solve collective action problems by getting everybody to play by one set of rules and punishing people who don't.

I know what you say is popular in certain political circles, but it's a false idea about government. Worse, it's a cynical meme that corrupts people into making government less effective, by both stopping people from trying to hold government to account, and not trying to change the rules that governments enforce.

The best way to make your idea of government true is to stand idly by and do nothing.

Revelant, see effect of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on food safety laws, which through popular sentiment forced the US government to create the FDA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

Though his intent was to create employment reforms. "Iaimed for the public's heart, and ... hit it in the stomach".

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/06052...

That was actually a very nice read! I just finished the book and certainly remember the meat factory scenes the most, but couldn't help but feel Upton would have been disappointed from the message he was trying to ultimately convey.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I know he was disappointed with the outcome, but it was still an improvement during a fairly capital-friendly administration.

(Though Teddy Roosevelt certainly pissed off monied interests when he felt they were acting immorally)

People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative, whereas it's purely positive. It's not about what the govt should do. It is what it does.

For example, the police, the IRS, DHS etc etc. (and hence the state) WILL be helped in their jobs by increasing surveillance, and so will always be trying to increase its scope.

Whether it's _worth_ the loss of privacy is of course a valid debate.

It is not a positive statement. It sounds like one, by it's actually a judgement about how effective government is. I'm quite certain that it is false.

It would certainly be interesting to hear some evidence or justification for this position, given that the record of governments with respect to privacy over the Internet era (at least) has been uniformly dismal and getting worse.

It certainly seems like the positive statement "government is not motivated to protect individual privacy and will not effectively do so" is well-supported by current experience.

People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative

A bit meta but I wish more up/downvoters on HN could tell the difference between normative and descriptive speech.

So do I, and I wish they could tell that speculations on motivation are inherently normative.

That's an explanation of how this is happening, not an argument that it should happen. What governments do is not some mysterious black-box that we can't influence.

I think we've all seen the story over and over: populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes.

So, maybe theoretically we can influence, but understanding the nature of what a self-interested, pragmatic government beaurocrat values is incredibly important.

I think the parent comment and idea behind it needs to be explored further. Maybe there is a solution, but it will perhaps require an entirely new type of government. Democracies, as we know them, don't seem capable of solving this problem.

Politicians aren't the problem. They don't exist in a vaccuum. They're a symptom.

Democracy is only the problem insofar as we (here in the US) do not have one, we just pretend we do. Democracy and Republic both mean a government by the public. Voting once a year, donating money, and writing stuff on the net are utterly inadequate for that end.

Public government needs educated and involved citizenry. It means putting in quite a bit of time.

People in democracies get the politicians they deserve. Look at Italy, the USA, Argentina, Hungary, Denmark, wherever

> populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes.

Remove the word "populist" and you've just described most politicians ;-)

Elect the parliament by lottery. 4 years of service if you get drafted, replace 25% of seats per year.

Would be far more representative of the people than current way and less susceptible to populism.

People often think I'm joking when I propose this but I haven't heard a good argument against it yet.

As someone who agrees with the idea, here's some arguments against it.

1) By taking the average, you are risking compounding educational decreases in the populace.

Bad public education policy is enacted, chosen politicians become less educated, worse public policy is enacted, etc etc.

2) By using less experienced politians, you lessen the efficiency of the entire political process.

3) By not having the possibility of re-election, you remove any responsibility of the elected after they're elected.

1) This mechanism is already present in the current electoral system and is very evident in the election of Trump.

2) This is the reason to only replace 25% if the parliament per year so that not all experience is lost. It gives more power to non-elected public officials which can be good or bad.

3) By removing reelection you also remove career politicians and reduce corruption. No need for campaign contributions or campaigning promises. Also, the drafted people would go back to their social circles to be judged by their peers after ended term of office where they would have to own their decisions.

1) Not nearly to the extent it would be. Unless you'd like to take the viewpoint that the upper class don't buy better educations than the rest of the country.

2) You still have a maximum 4 year experience level. As someone who grew up in a college town, I'd estimate having to explain the basics to 1/4 of the elected body every year would require significant resources.

Additionally, handled incorrectly, you imperil the stability of the legislature. Imagine if every year were Trump election year: Mr. John and Ms. Jane Doe go to Washington intent on toppling the system as it stands because they're unhappy with the way things are.

3) Fair, but the social censure of being judged is a few orders of magnitude smaller than the power these people would wield while in office. If you think politicians are corrupt now, imagine if Exxon offered $x million in bribes to an average person off the street to approve oil drilling in wilderness refuges.

There is a lot wrong with the wealthy monopolizing political power, but at least it semi-insulates them against outright financial persuasion.

If jury duty is random why not political duty? I think your idea (is it your idea?) deserves a lot of attention. Maybe 2 years of service. 4 is a lot. That combined with Swiss-style direct democracy would go a long way I feel. And universal basic income.

> If jury duty is random why not political duty?

Jurors are asked to do a couple fairly common tasks that most people do frequently throughout their lives: (1) listen to different sides of a story and decide which side to believe, and (2) decide the motives for a person's acts.

A legislator is asked to judge complex policy questions often requiring extensive specialized knowledge. The arguments for and against are often long and complex. It's not a job you can expect to take some random adult off the street for and have them do it competently.

Why should a career in party politics improve your ability to make these decisions?

Do current law makers have to pass some kind of knowledge based test to be allowed to make the decisions?

See the Ekklesia (Ancient Greece) for pro/con:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817173

Similar idea:

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212

I don't think it's a problem of defining ever more detailed or different government rule sets, but a problem of the feedback between the people governed and the people governing. The institutions of law provide some help - mostly by beneficially slowing down how fast things can change, but the maintenance of a stable government is a balance of politicians and leaders do, and what people allow. A much more dynamic, and fragile relationship than most of us care to contemplate.

There are more than "politician corrupted by power" stories, there are also many politician does a good thing and fades into the background, or politician leads well for a long time stories too. These are less exciting and usually receive far less press, because they are remarkable in their unremarkable outcomes.

Honestly, I'd prefer to have a government repeatedly fail to implement its own agenda than one which whips violently to and fro like a tree in a storm. When we let the mob into the halls of power we get a lot of bloodshed and little good. The intransigence of the bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug.

Furthermore, since corporations are not subject to FOIA, governments routinely outsource to avoid transparency, accountability, oversight, responsibility, etc.

I don't think it quite works to try to talk about governments as if they are individual, coherent entities.

There are government agencies whose business is to collect information. The people working for these agencies will do so _to the extent that they are allowed to_, because that is what they perceive their mission to be. Other people's job is to set limits, and they will set exactly the limits they think they have a mandate to set. They get their sense of that mandate from many possible sources, but in a republic one of the most important sources is public opinion.

Which is where you get to the real kernel of the issue: In the USA, surveys indicate that most Americans remain in favor of large scale state surveillance.

There's a curious abstract thinking process of "government can do some good in the world" that spawns the bureaucratic leviathan capable of all kinds of mischief.

I read some of ancestors' comments and wonder why they always seem willfully blind to it. Is there a still small voice in them that says, "A little waste is to be expected" or "WE are in control of it, I am certain"? Utopian dreamers and busybodies, ugh.

Governments are made up of people and what governments want are afraid of or are motivated by is the sum of what those people want, are afraid of and are motivated by.

I don't think that's true, even under your model of a malicious government. Officials don't want their private conversations monitored, so they ensured that it would be a crime to secretly record conversations.

Likewise, once these tools are used to compromise their privacy, they will demand better safeguards.

In a less cynical world, what the government actually needs is the mandate of the people to rule. Therefore protecting their personal interests could be of interest if it was demanded by the people.

Case in point, just last week the Indian government was trying to fight the Supreme court of our country AGAINST privacy laws.

Supreme court (and the people) prevailed, Privacy is now a fundamental right.

This is the crux of the whole privacy issue for me.

I understand there is way too much money in advertising, and therefore data collection, to ever go away. What I want in an ideal world is transparency. If I opt-in to using web services that collect + sell my browsing data, I want to know what data is collected, how much, and who it is sold to and for what. Then I can make an informed decision about the services I'm utilizing and if I think they are handling data responsibly.

As far as I'm concerned, targeted ads are fine. If you're going to berate me with visual pollution for crap I don't need, at least let it be somewhat relevant to my life. What I don't want is "targeted information", "curation", or any other buzz word that describes showing me filtered content based on an algorithm. Of course that is already happening, but it could be much, much worse.

Ideally instead of a wall of text preceding the use of a service, or even worse hidden away somewhere under a fine-print footer link, I'd like to see services have to do something like this:

"You've just entered some search text. May we store this text and future search queries?

[ ] yes, anonymously to help suggest searches for other users [ ] yes, along with your user name to help refine future searches, and to improve the targeting of our advertising [ ] oh god no, forget I asked"

When clicking a search result:

"Before we redirect you to this page, may we record the fact that you clicked on it?

(similar choices)"

And as they build up history:

"From information you've previously allowed us to save and information we've bought from authorized third parties, we've determined that you are a 35-year old green-skinned right-wing vegetarian with the following sexual fetishes: <redacted>. May we share this information with our advertisers?"

I would hope things would change if permissions were this explicit.

If you got asked 5 questions for every page you visited, what would end up happening is people would start clicking yes without reading. You would get overwhelmed by requests that you would start paying less and less attention to them.

This would quickly become the incessant prompts about cookie usage that the UK enforces. Like most alerts users quickly become blind to them and click through to get to what they are trying to accomplish.

"This product is known to the State of California to..."

This is on the right track. I'd like to see it go farther though. Each of these pieces of information has value of X to an advertiser. Flip the relationship management, so vendors treat their users as content producers, and pay some fraction of X to access the user's information. This would need better trust technologies, but is the right path. It's the path groups like the Project VRM folks at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working toward, and ties in to Cory Doctorow's concept of Whuffie. Also ties into my concept of Communitivity enhancing software technologies - technologies that help people do community.

Or just assume everything you send someone else will be saved by that person.

It's easy to think "more logging/transparency never hurts" until you actually try it out and see how much data you get that you don't really care about. The EU cookie law is nothing but an annoyance already - making it even more laborious and universal is not going to help anyone. It'd basically be EULAs everywhere.

I see your point - I was thinking more along the lines of a directory of sorts that would show recent data purchases, partnerships, etc.

It's too easy to hide your true intentions behind generic EULAs that are inundated with lawyer speak.

Perhaps if companies that collect and share data were required to maintain a list of their transactions, press release style? Statements could be generalized such that it is understood how all users were affected collectively by a particular decision. It might be a workable middle ground.

> If I opt-in to using web services that collect + sell my browsing data, I want to know what data is collected, how much, and who it is sold to and for what.

Hm...

1. I install an Android app.

2. Android app requests access to data sources A-Z.

3. I can safely assume that the company which owns this app is collecting all data their app running on my device sends it through data sources A-Z.

4. I can safely assume that the company is leveraging all that data in whatever way suits them, including selling it to third parties.

5. As far as who it is sold to and for what purpose, I can safely assume I won't be getting access to that information, ever. There was a very simple question asked on this forum awhile back merely requesting the names of the companies that are in general trafficking in people's personal information. You had to scroll way down the list to even see someone willing to list some of the obvious data brokers.

It is very hard to turn privacy into a mainstream issue when billions of people actively share everything they see and do online to everyone all for a dopamine "like" fix it. Of course, they want it both ways. Share only what they want and all other things should be private.

Humorous anecdote: A few years a ago, an old colleague of mine got fired and posted all kinds of negative things about the company all over Facebook. The company got word of some of this (slander? libel?) and contacted her via an attorney to stop or be sued. This person then made a post on Facebook about how "... people need to mind their own business!". I think the irony was completely lost on them.

>privacy needs to be a mainstream political issue

There was a great piece on NPR this weekend: They developed StingRay and what-not cell tracking devices to fight terror, then Obama expanded it, now Trump is "doubling down" on using surveillance tech to find and deport illegals -- and the government is paying police depts to have the tech...

Snowden was right, and now, its way worse.

What is even more abhorrent than this, is that tech companies (yes even ones that YC is funding) collude with government for expanding even deeper.

> Perhaps we need to see what Google and Facebook actually have on us...

A great approach to spreading awareness is doing exactly this. There are groups like the one linked below who have been staging immersive theatre pieces which simulate a scenario where a devious actor has gained access to your data. And they do this with the audience's actual social media data (voluntarily given and erased after the show) so that the implications really hit home to them.

https://quantifiedselfless.tumblr.com/

The elephant in the room is that most of the information people get today is filtered through the same entities that are benefiting from all of these privacy invasions. The conflict of interest is real and intense.

That doesn't even touch on the other prong of the problem, being that the ones responsible for legislating privacy rights also benefiting greatly from the lack of it.

> privacy needs to be a mainstream political issue

No way. The political process will not produce a workable, sustainable, reasonable solution.

The only way that privacy becomes important to existing large companies is if their users demand it -- and leave for competitors if they don't get it. I'm afraid that average people don't understand why privacy is important, and it will take a change in cultural mindset to improve the situation (read: a generation).

Another (and better) way for users to regain privacy is a technological shift in which new companies with a better business model and technology replace the current batch of incumbents. This is the more likely outcome, as billion-dollar profits tend to make companies conservative and ripe for disruption.

The political process should represent the will of the people and find solutions that represent the will of the people. The free market is not necessarily the best solution because it is arguable that we don't really live in a free market; consumers aren't all that educated or rational. The problem is that companies will find ways to subvert their users into thinking privacy is not important. They already have a large captive audience and they can condition then to think as they please.

I do not share your faith in democracy :-) At best, the government represents the will of a voting majority and imposes it upon the rest of the population. So what you really have is minority rule.

Look at public funding for science, NASA budget, etc to see the "will of the people" in action on technical topics.

> consumers aren't all that educated or rational

Be that as it may, I would rather make decisions for myself than have them made on my behalf, "for my own good," by someone who doesn't know me and whom I will never meet.

Have you lobbied? Testified? Met with any of your legislators, representatives, councilmembers? Other forms of participation?

Voting is the smallest part of democracy.

An idealist to the end, eh? Without money to throw around, those forms of "participation" are - especially at the federal level - about as useful as earning participation trophies.

Less, even; since the latter at least get you free paperweights.

Besides which, arguing for them means you've effectively bought into class based discrimination, as many working poor wouldn't be able to afford anything but an email or letter. And if you think those form a reliable bedrock of democracy I'll stop humoring you as having anything useful to contribute to this discussion.

"...you've effectively bought into class based discrimination... And if you think..."

PS- That's actually pretty offensive. My friends worked on DREAM Act, expanding our local voting rights for Latinos (and everyone else), protections for sex workers, better conditions for migrant farm workers. I support as able (donations, petitions, warm body for hearings, etc). I see the effort involved AND their results. And, frankly, they're the only groups that are getting the job done these days. So I can't speak to what you think is and isn't possible. But maybe take a look around you, find your local heroes, lend a hand.

Realist.

I encourage you to read the book The Waxman Report, to better understand how policy and legislation are forged. It's a lightweight, layperson intro. TLDR: It takes decades to research, build support, reach consensus. And then big changes apparently happen all at once.

People I know have been working on paid parental leave and domestic care legislation for EIGHTEEN YEARS. Last month, they were happy to report that their legislation was passed and signed.

Prior examples are marijuana legalization, marriage equality, background checks for gun purchases, education and healthcare for immigrant children. Etc.

What is privacy? What does it look like?

No one knows. There is no agreement. There is not even consensus on the questions, much less the answers. So imagining a technological solution (implementation) isn't even remotely possible.

This privacy policy stuff is wicked complicated. I've been working on voter privacy and protecting healthcare records since 2004. I'm still learning new things, causing me to revisit my positions.

And only now, some 12 years later, I've finally figured out what to ask for, a proposal on how to fix this mess.

> should

Being the operative word. If you wish to pretend America's political process can approximate a hypothetical ideal on paper you're lying to yourself.

Until campaign finance regulations are back in place (the FECA amendments in the 70s would be a good starting point), until parties are wrested away from being the nigh-privatized dichotomy that led to the latest election's outcome, until the revolving door between government and the private sector is stopped, none of the rifts between that hypothetical and reality will be mended, because they are all symptoms of those key issues.

At least part of the problem is that no one knows exactly what the fix should be, legislatively.

How do you define what info Google and Facebook shouldn't be able to collect?

> Perhaps we need to see what Google and Facebook actually have on us...

Maybe we should hit them where it hurts by actively promoting and cajoling friends and family to use adblockers. Collect all the information you want, Big Internet, but good luck monetizing it.

It's impractical to opt out, yes. But one can compartmentalize. So I have a rich online life using my real name. But it's not in English. Everything that Mirimir does online is interlinked. But it's not at all linked to my real name. Or to my other online personas.

For sure, I'm a zealot about this. I use nested VPN chains and Tor, and multiple VMs on multiple hosts. But anyone can use a VPN service that respects privacy. Such as AirVPN, IVPN or PIA. Not HideMyAss, however ;)

insufficient.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/21/fbi-cr...

It was stupid mistakes that led to takedowns of Silk Road, KickassTorrents, The Love Zone, Sheep Marketplace, AlphaBay, and Sabu de LulzSec.

However, Operation Onymous did rely on Tor deanonymization data provided by CMU researchers to the FBI. The CMU group had exploited a bug in Tor to get ISP-assigned IPs for numerous users and onion servers.

Even so, Operation Onymous would arguably have failed if those users and onion servers had accessed Tor through nested chains of at least three VPN services. And used firewall rules, and isolated VPN and Tor gateways in separate machines/VMs. Isolated from workspace machines/VMs. Also, operators and users of those onion servers would have remained safe if they had done the same.

In a few other cases, such as Freedom Hosting and Playpen, the FBI used NIT malware to deanonymize users of onion sites that had already been confiscated. The malware bypassed Tor to send IPs and other information to FBI servers. But only Windows users were affected, because the NIT only ran on Windows. Also, users that used firewall rules and/or separate Tor gateway machines (such as Whonix) were unaffected. And finally, even Tor browser users would have remained safe if they had accessed Tor through nested chains of at least three VPN services.

So yes, use nested chains of at least three VPN services to access Tor. And watch your OPSEC. Compartmentalize, compartmentalize, compartmentalize!

So, the approach is insufficient only if you're sloppy.

>I don't know what needs to happen for people to get outraged, but privacy needs to be a mainstream political issue.

Almost totally orthogonal to discussions about how bad lack of privacy is getting, but the answer to the question posed is certainly any tangibly bad results of lack of privacy in my everyday life, ever. Which there really are none, so far. Certainly none that the average person would attribute to lack of privacy.

The consequences are distributed over a long period of time, whereas the convenience of ignoring privacy is very tangible and immediate.

Availability bias. You're not able to see it around you, or immediately. It doesn't mean there's no effect.

I've given up on people being outraged or even informed. Maybe I should just say I've given up on people.

The question is, can the curation and rating be done by private agencies like Zagat instead of the Meat Inspection Act? Can it be turtles all the way down? Or must there be monopolies?

> Perhaps we need to see what Google and Facebook actually have on us...

I'm still curious about the worst case. What are some doom scenarios?

Orwell 1984

> Perhaps we need to see what Google and Facebook actually have on us...

What do you have in mind?

FOIA requests! /s

https://myaccount.google.com/

I think the solution is simple.. yet unethical.

Expose politicians personal data.

Privacy will quickly become much more important.

> but privacy needs to be a mainstream political issue

Honestly most people don't care and money talks... This is the new normal, better get used to it. This fight was lost a long time ago.

Yes, money talks. Which is why free software that is guaranteed to stay free is a resilient solution if we can develop it.

Privacy violations exist so middle men can make money. Cutting out the middle men solves the privacy problem AND motivates people by saving them money.

> Cutting out the middle men solves the privacy problem AND motivates people by saving them money.

Too many middle men. How many middle men are inbetween you and me right now with this post? Probably 5 companies at a min? People are interested in saving money but not at the expense of their time or convenience. I agree with you, but it's just never going to happen.

There is definite value in cutting out a few of those middlemen or even just decreasing their capabilities.

We have representatives that are supposed to care about these types of technical issues so we don't have to. In our republican form of government their job is to make sure that government is working for us. The real problem is that billionaires and corporations have convinced a significant portion of the public that government is evil and should be destroyed and that any kind of commercial restraint is un-american communism.

>>money talks

>>>representatives that are supposed to care

You can do the math.

I think there's more to it than that. A significant portion of the public sincerely believes that the government should not regulate anything.

Yeah - its not an easy statement...

For your privacy protections you must fill out the proper regulations in triplicate:

* Be white

* Be American* (all restrictions apply)

* Be not poor

* Be ignorant (Provision already covered under the US Department of Education, so likely you qualify if you dont meet "not poor" provision)

* Do not understand politics

* etc other factors

I am in that camp. Except, I'm very much on the left side of the political spectrum. I don't think the government should prohibit this behavior. I would rather they established regulations that ensured notice was given and loss/abuse of this data was prosecuted.

Not really. Surveillance as the primary way essential services are paid for is, in relative terms, an extremely new business model, and one that's already adverse to meaningful competition. It's escaped regulation so far mainly as a product of public ignorance and private lobbying.

The EU and independent US states are already starting to legislate for consumer/citizen protections. The public response has generally been positive.

It's easy to forget that 'surveillance capitalism' was seen by most outside of our bubble as a trivial little industry until fairly recently.

Surveillance? If the government doesn't monitor us directly they will just go after all the products and services that we use that monitors us already. I dont even think Im being pessimistic here but the line in the sand for legitimate privacy was drawn about a decade ago and we crossed that line. I really think this is the new norm, it's like asking us to use on-prem hardware instead of AWS, sure it's still an option but hardly anyone cares where the hardware is... This is just how it is now.

Wouldn't people have said the same about cable TV in the 90s, CFCs in the 80s, slavery, child labor, etc. etc. ad nauseam?

I believe that the system is democratic enough that if people are organized and ask governments nicely, they can have privacy protections.

It's really only Google and Facebook that profit substantially from this crap, and there are good arguments that it would be beneficial to the rest of the economy to knock a bit of wind out of their sails for a while (a more diverse range of competitors, a stimulant to VC-investment to try new monetization strategies).

Disruption can happen democratically, too!

Cryptography is not magic, and it will become the standard. Privacy can either be provided, demanded, or created. Since nobody wants to demand it, and it is not being provided, there is only one option.

Yes, cryptography will become the standard. No, that won't protect you from the little brothers mentioned in the interview.

Your email will travel securely, so the government can't read it. It'll travel securely from Chrome on your Android device to a server somewhere in a Google datacenter. Your web browsing will be encrypted with https, so your ISP will need to use their DNS logs and traffic analysis in order to deduce parts of your browsing history. If you turn off location services, your location won't be stored with Apple, but your Telco needs to know in which cell your phone is located in order to route calls there. And it'd be a terrible waste to just throw that data away the day after, now wouldn't it.

Encryption helps. And we need encryption. Everywhere, and as quickly as possible. But privacy is also political issue, and a technical solution alone won't resolve it, no matter how advanced.

Oh, and not to forget: Ease of use is the way to mind share, not security. WhatsApp is by far the most widespread secure messenger. Not because of its security; in fact its security used to be terrible. The way in was ease of use, with security added to the mix at a later time. And, more importantly, without disrupting the user experience.

I would add that unless data security is the default, it is ineffective. Moreover, it's demonstrably false that data security is hard on usability. Skype became popular because easy-to-use data security made it possible to build a p2p communications product. Most users didn't know or care they were using encrypted communications.

"people dont care"

There are pleny of ppl that care. the problem is the tools allotted to them to affect change....

...few....

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