Timeline for How can I explain to non-techie friends that "cryptography is good"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 17, 2016 at 9:05 | comment | added | Byte Commander | You should emphasize that the house would have no locks at all then. It's not like the police had a master key, there's no lock. You could also replace the door with a curtain. This does not only allow the police to check your home for criminals, it allows every guy on the street to sneak in, look around, and even take a souvenir with them! | |
| May 17, 2016 at 7:22 | comment | added | Kevin | @sitic Does it matter if the analogy falls short if it gets the point across? | |
| May 17, 2016 at 3:30 | comment | added | Aron | @sitic I actually like this analogy because it highlights the biggest difference, and why cryptography is important. IRL the police can break a door with a battering ram/explosives, and they can easily control access to who has these items. In the digital world, no one can stop the rapid spread of items such as Jennifer Lawrence's nude pics, or a digital battering ram. The day the police gets the iPhone battering ram, is the day before the rest of the internet gets it. | |
| May 15, 2016 at 19:23 | comment | added | user28177 | People tend to isolate data from physical access to their lifes. They dont want the government to have the keys, but will not bother if their door is break to catch a criminal | |
| May 14, 2016 at 20:24 | comment | added | supercat | @sitic: They may be capable of physically destroying any lock/safe, but that doesn't imply that they would have the capability to extract contents without damage from safes that were designed to destroy their contents in case of tampering. | |
| May 14, 2016 at 8:10 | comment | added | eggyal | Whilst I agree the analogy as put falls short, I nevertheless follow this approach to have people imagine what conventional methods would be required to collate the same information as is provided by electronic monitoring: one would have to be followed everywhere by a surveillance team, who would listen in and record all one's movements/contacts/conversations, intercept one's post, plant bugs in one's home, copy all one's private paperwork... for those who send intimate communications, it could even be equivalent to having one's bedroom activities filmed. Scary stuff. | |
| May 13, 2016 at 21:33 | comment | added | sitic | I agree with the answer, but if falls too short. Police can break any lock/safe in the physical world, but they can't break strong cryptography. The difference is that on the internet there is no such thing as distance, while locks are constrained by the physical world. A burglar can't break into thousands of homes at the same time, but a hacker can. Cryptography needs to be unbreakable, as it is the foundation of the technology around us. See the video on the topic from CGP Grey. | |
| May 13, 2016 at 19:42 | review | First posts | |||
| May 13, 2016 at 19:46 | |||||
| May 13, 2016 at 19:37 | history | answered | PseudoSu | CC BY-SA 3.0 |