Proton Mail, the leading privacy-focused email service, is making its first foray into blockchain technology with Key Transparency, which will allow users to verify email addresses. From a report: In an interview with Fortune, CEO and founder Andy Yen made clear that although the new feature uses blockchain, the key technology...
Wouldn’t you, in practice, basically need a lawyer to help make sure you “use” it correctly and legally?
Using private cryptocurrency is not illegal, at least in the United States, nor should it be. This is like worrying if it is legal to pay for things with cash.
What are the tradeoffs, assuming an email encryption scheme based on self custodied private keys and publicly published public keys? I don’t see any major disadvantages to using blockchain for this, and significant advantages. It’s a big deal if no one can selectively remove/conceal previously published info. If associating a key with an email, and someone is trying to impersonate you, you’ll know it, it’s not going to be hidden from you and specifically shown to someone else. It just makes sense to do it that way. Yes, you have to trust something at some point, but this is a way to minimize how much trust you have to give.
It’s an email that’s unrecoverable so not usable in many companies.
It doesn’t sound like you understand why someone would want to do email with public key cryptography, it sounds like rather you do not like the idea of doing email with public key cryptography. Being unrecoverable is just the tradeoff there. Again, what do you think the problem described even is? For reference,
The issue, Yen said, is ensuring that the public key actually belongs to the intended recipient. “Maybe it’s the NSA that has created a fake public key linked to you, and I’m somehow tricked into encrypting data with that public key,” he told Fortune. In the security space, the tactic is known as a “man-in-the-middle attack,” like a postal worker opening your bank statement to get your social security number and then resealing the envelope.
I think if you actually acknowledge the problem of trust for propagating public keys as a real one that is worth being solved, it would be hard to argue that blockchain is a bad fit for that problem, because it is not. Trustless, verifiable propagation of data is one of the things it actually offers unique benefits for.
I’m sure there are other reasons to not like the idea, but that’s what I can think off the top of my head.
It might be useful to start by considering the idea itself and what it is saying, instead of looking for arguments to make against it.
To be clear this isn’t quite my own argument; even though I am saying that transportation emissions are too substantial to be ignored, I am skeptical of “personal responsibility” type solutions. I think it would be better to approach this with stuff like taxing companies based on employee commutes, taxing oil, urban planning and improved public transportation.
the necessary changes to effectively combat this environmental catastrophy would mean a complete upheaval of our lives
Yes. But that doesn’t mean it makes sense to frame things as being about who is ‘good’ and who is to be blamed, or that the impetus for change should be personal initiative to adjust away from unsustainable lifestyles. What’s needed is uncompromising policy solutions, and ones that are designed by experts to actually have a direct impact. People often get confused about what matters and what doesn’t, and proportionality. For instance restrictions on plastic bags at grocery stores is totally negligible for climate change, and arguably makes the situation slightly worse. Meat consumption has a significant impact globally, but in a first world context is relatively insignificant compared to the other things we do to create emissions. The problem isn’t that people aren’t choosing to live virtuously, since even if they did many attractive definitions of virtuous would not produce the needed results, and realistically that is not a viable way for human behavior to be adjusted anyway. The problem is that the circumstances around us shape our lives, and impel us to live in an unsustainable way, and that is what has to change.
Basically I think it just has to be more things like, accepting that deliberately high gas prices are a necessary sacrifice for the wellbeing of humanity, rather than asking everyone to choose to drive less and pat themselves on the back when they manage it and feel shame when they do not.
I guess that makes sense if you’re watching movies with people who have a lot of thoughts about movies, I’ve never watched a movie with someone who had more than ten second’s worth of things to say about it afterwards though.
That’s certainly admirable if true, but you can’t force anyone to accept that your own notions of what constitutes a compelling argument are the right way to decide what to think. Arguments almost never resolve themselves like a math equation, because there are always things people cannot understand about each other and their perspectives, and there are always things you do not understand about the world.
You mention religious zealotry in another comment. Have you ever had a long argument about spirituality with a very religious person trying to convert you, who has a sincere and elaborate concept of why their religious beliefs are undeniable? Such people think that given the essential truth of their beliefs, if only you could be made to see that truth you couldn’t help but be persuaded, and that it would be useful and just to continue trying to persuade you indefinitely. And the logic is coming from a place other than an orientation around evidence and discovering the world on its own terms without assumptions that a scientific rationalist might have, but you can still see somewhat that in their minds it all fits together given their worldview. It isn’t some intellectual decay. And neither is it the case that you aren’t converting to their religion because you have made a mistake or have some failure of spirit, but they can’t or won’t see that. And at some point you just have to accept that they’re never going to see it, and say “I just disagree” even though you’ve heard and considered what they have said, even though you may not entirely comprehend whatever spiritual feeling they are trying to convey to you. That is not a failed argument, it’s a fine way for a conversation to go.
What makes a good argument is that, in the end, everyone understands each other and their thoughts and feelings a little better. Approaching it with the attitude of a conqueror isn’t the best for that I think, it’s just obnoxious and makes people want to dig in their heels about whatever the topic is.
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Proton Mail CEO Calls New Address Verification Feature 'Blockchain in a Very Pure Form' (tech.slashdot.org)
Proton Mail, the leading privacy-focused email service, is making its first foray into blockchain technology with Key Transparency, which will allow users to verify email addresses. From a report: In an interview with Fortune, CEO and founder Andy Yen made clear that although the new feature uses blockchain, the key technology...
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