Benlog

Category: cryptorealism

  • there are 3 kinds of crypto

    When we use terminology that is too broad, too coarse-grained, we make discussion more difficult. That sounds obvious, but it’s easy to miss in practice. We’ve made this mistake in spades with crypto. Discussing the field as one broad topic is counter-productive and leads to needless bickering. I see 3 major kinds of crypto: b2c…

  • no user is an island

    US government agencies appear to be engaged in large-scale Internet surveillance, using secret court orders to force major Internet companies to provide assistance. The extent of this assistance is a topic of debate. What’s clear, though, is that the process itself is opaque: it’s impossible to know how broad or inappropriate the surveillance may be.…

  • a hopeful note about PRISM

    You know what? I’m feeling optimistic suddenly. Mere hours ago, all of us tech/policy geeks lost our marbles over PRISM. And in the last hour, we’ve got two of the most strongly worded surveillance rebuttals I’ve ever seen from major Internet Companies. Here’s Google’s CEO Larry Page: we provide user data to governments only in…

  • encryption is not gravy

    When designing a secure service that stores user data, you might be temped to say “let’s make sure the data is encrypted.” That statement implies that you’re proposing adding goodness, without taking anything away. Something like “I’d like some of that delicious gravy on my roast turkey, please.” Clearly, turkey with gravy is strictly better…