Re: "Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages"

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 12, 2013, at 11:21 AM, Norbert Bollow <nb@bollow.ch> wrote:

> Karl Dubost <karl@la-grange.net> wrote:
>
>> How much I dislike both
>> * DRM/EME
>> * The spying going on citizens
>>
>> I would like we avoid to mix things which are slightly orthogonal for
>> their application domains. Yes closed softwares are an opportunity
>> for abusing the trust of users, but that is intrinsically true of all
>> closed softwares for ANY W3C or other standards organizations
>> specifications.
>
> The key distinction is that the EME spec has the property than in
> practice, if you want to partake in what the spec is intended to
> enable, you will have to use closed software that comes from a company
> that you may not trust.

Just to re-iterate, the intention is that the closed software comes
from, or is at least well understood by, your browser implementor or
your OS implementor. I believe you have bigger problems if you don't
trust either of those. Furthermore, you have choices, which through
the operation of competition pushes these vendors towards honesty and
transparency.

This is in contrast to the current situation where the closed software
comes from a third party who indeed you may not trust and about whom
you have no choice.

Is this not an improvement ?

...Mark

>
> By contrast most standards, including so far all of W3C's
> recommendations, do not have that problem. There you always have the
> freedom to make your own choice about whom you want to trust, and the
> truly paranoid can even hire someone to do a professional source code
> base security audit first.
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>

Received on Friday, 12 July 2013 19:26:18 UTC