Ask HN: Strong Arguments for Unencrypted Networks? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Strong Arguments for Unencrypted Networks?

1 pointjka8 comments

- My neighbours can reassure me that I haven't downloaded malware, and vice versa?

- Parents can more easily monitor their children's viewing habits?

- Caretakers can assess whether the browsing activity for the elderly is normal?

- Personal data isn't "locked up" and purely entrusted to ISPs, companies providing services, and sophisticated criminals/intelligence agencies?

- Peer groups of friends and companions can verify that payments made by people are expected?

- Peer groups of friends can identify attempts to scam/defraud people?

- Archiving of societal activity over history becomes easier?

- It's more like the way reality is?

Edit: consolidating some extra items from previously-separate comments:

- Bonus side-effect: computationally less expensive.

- One significant/important drawback: authenticity and content integrity become harder to verify (although those can both be achieved thanks to cryptographic signatures within plaintext transmissions)

- Your neighbors share your sexting sessions.

- Any joke you make can be misunderstanded by the HOA.

- Someone can see and post your salary in a big sign in front of your home.

I do mostly agree with you, because I (again, mostly) live in the present and in reality, but there are some reasonable counterarguments, I think:

- You can see that they're sharing your texts, and for some people, that would actually be great (exhibitionism, and/or narcissism to some degree). There's also a potential sex-positivity angle whereby you could receive feedback and suggestions for improvements.

- That's fair; although it also helps increase the corpus of joke material. And hopefully a friendly neighbour (and/or HOA) would ask to clarify or let you know that there was some potential for confusion before taking any action in return.

- It's possible that society could benefit from compensation levels being made public? (in some countries, it already effectively is)

Lack of sanity?

Is it the same to ask: strong arguments to deliver untreated water to people's houses?

What kind of problems related to mental health might you expect as a result of widespread use of unencrypted networks?

And no, I don't that the water-related question is equivalent, although in the spirit of debate, I'll attempt to answer with a unifying concept: in both cases, it is preferable for the content of the {network channels/water streams} to be healthy and fit for consumption.

Unencrypted networks can be easily intercepted and attacked. It makes life of an attacker a LOT easier to manipulate ANYTHING you receive and send to the other parties in the network.

Given the modern examples of how information systems can affect people's mental health, I think it's reasonable to assume that an unencrypted network has the potential to be quite dangerous to anyone that happens to come under attack.

EDIT: many reduce the role of cryptography only to conceal information. Rather, perhaps even more important and widespread use of cryptography is in guaranteeing information integrity and trust in third party's identity.

> Given the modern examples of how information systems can affect people's mental health, I think it's reasonable to assume that an unencrypted network has the potential to be quite dangerous to anyone that happens to come under attack.

That is, perhaps unusually, why I think it could, under some circumstances, be far preferable for (some? most?) network traffic to be more transparent.

(and yep, totally agree with you that identity and integrity are important to maintain)

None of these arguments offsets the risk of payment info theft or identity theft.

Ultimately a computer network cannot genuinely steal the identity of a person, unless I'm mistaken - they're a person, and their human connections understand that.

With many of today's payment methods, I agree that the payment identifiers are susceptible to being copied in unencrypted environments. However, identification/authentication and authorization are two separate steps - it'd be possible to entrust authorization, for example, to groups of trusted friends/family (with perhaps separate social groups and rules based on category of purchase, amount, and so on).

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