Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Mon May 28 15:00:36 UTC 2018

On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 09:23:09AM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
> Some things certainly do need to be encrypted, but encrypting everything
> means people with limited Internet access get worse performance OR
> mechanisms have to be out in place to break ALL encryption, this
> compromising security and privacy when it's really needed.

There are better places to reduce traffic while simultaneously enhancing
security and privacy.  The new EU version of the home page of USA Today
is about 20% the size of the one presented in the US -- because it's
had all the tracking and scripting stripped out -- with a concomitant
reduction in load time and rendering time.  Much more drastic reductions
are available elsewhere, e.g., mail messages composed of text only are
typically 5% to 10% the size of the same messages marked up with HTML.

The problem (part of the problem) is that the people doing these foolish
things are new, ignorant, and privileged: they don't realize that bandwidth
is still an expensive and scarce resource for most of the planet.  I've
said for years that every web designer should be forced to work in an
environment bandlimited to 56K in order to instll in them the virtue
of frugality and strongly discourage them from flattering their egos
by creating all-singing all-dancing web sites...that look great in the
portfolios they'll show to their peers but are horribly bloated, slow,
unrenderable in a lot of browsers, and fraught with security and privacy
problems.  (Try pointing a text-only browser at your favorite website.
Can you even read the home page?)

---rsk