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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

On the off chance this heads off any super-unproductive debates:

When you're advising/training at-risk end users, it's not enough that it be possible to achieve some kind of security with a given load-out. It needs to be secure without trying hard.

So for the purposes of this document, we don't really need to litigate this phone or that browser. We just have to note that for non-specialist end-users in high-stakes environments:

* It has to work.

* It has to stand a good chance of retaining secure without trying.

* It has to be incredibly simple to get everyone set up the same way.

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A casual read says the safest easiest setup is everyone doing all their work on a recent iPhone model. Good news is, assuming the budget requirement can be met, this is pretty close to what is already happening for most people.

Indeed; most Washington types who used to live on Blackberry (excluding those who haven’t yet had to give their precious up) moved to iPhones over Android, in my anecdotal experience. Outlook is the name of the game, and that runs quite well on iOS. Though it sounds like this training would push people toward the Gmail app, which is just fine.

One point I would make is that it’s rather easy to make Siri only respond after unlocking, but that’s probably out of scope of this training — and not something staffers are going to remember. For added security, disable Hey Siri, too, because that’s a hot mic. (But again, scope.)

Can we just all be clear that these aren't "Washington types" we're talking about? These are random businesspeople in random Congressional districts scattered throughout the US.

I don’t follow what you’re correcting or why you’re using my comment to launch off on that correction to everyone, because I was agreeing with Jeff on the broader motion to iOS based on my anecdotal experience with Washington staffers in general, not limited to a Congressional campaign. That being said, the senior ranks of any successful national campaign are always Washington types (one notable, recent outlier notwithstanding), and they benefit dramatically from this training, so it’s not even an unfair observation in the context you’re asserting.

(Unless you’re saying a gaggle of Chamber of Commerce suits from Topeka can navigate party politics, secure funding, get attention, get nominated, then somehow win without DC experience and connections in leadership.)

Edit: 'idlewords — I tried to reply to you before you deleted; Congress or a Congressional campaign means a national race, and toned my replies here. You and Thomas are talking about state legislature races, apparently, which was not obvious until your deleted comment. We don’t identify state-level legislative bodies as Congress, which is a term that means the entire national legislative body, not just the House. It’d be half appropriate to say congressional without a capital C, but still weird. Gotta enunciate state.

I genuinely thought you were training early campaigns for next national, the way you worded it. You should, honestly. They don’t get awesome advice.

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