One of the things that has helped enable the NSA to vacuum up the Internet is shoddy software.
For a bunch of us, especially those who had followed security and the warrantless wiretapping cases, the [Snowden] revelations weren’t big surprises. We didn’t know the specifics, but people who keep an eye on software knew computer technology was sick and broken. We’ve known for years that those who want to take advantage of that fact tend to circle like buzzards. The NSA wasn’t, and isn’t, the great predator of the internet, it’s just the biggest scavenger around. It isn’t doing so well because they are all powerful math wizards of doom.
The fix isn’t just litigating the NSA out of our Internet lives, it’s also fixing a culture of releasing half-baked software. And not just user apps like MS Word, but also router and switch operating systems, printer operating systems, etc.
We often point out that the phone you mostly play casual games on and keep dropping in the toilet at bars is more powerful than all the computing we used to go to space for decades.
Blackphone is a company I have my eye on, hoping they’ll start a trend towards security-minded smart phones, but the question is, how will they be received by the public? Are we ready to sacrifice some features and some convenience for better security and better privacy?
I doubt it.