When You Are the Adversary

Presented at HOPE X (2014), July 19, 2014, 7 p.m. (60 minutes).

If your name isn't Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras, or Glenn Greenwald, chances are that while the NSA may be a rights-violating threat to all, it's not your actual, day-to-day adversary. Real world adversaries tend to be spouses, parents, bosses, school administrators, random drive-by malware, and maybe local law enforcement. While federal threats create a terrible security culture, they aren't stepping into the lives of most people. And while obsessing over various intelligence agencies and trying to build tools against them makes you feel like a badass, it doesn't help most people. Fixing Flash and building easy to use communication tools does change the lives of countless people. This talk will focus on the infosec needs of the 99 percent - who aren't geeks. This talk will touch upon the value of bad crypto when it lets someone escape an abusive spouse, and the common situations where tools that let people sidestep the requirements of their IT departments make the world a better place. Yes, the big bad guys still matter, but fighting a billion little bad guys probably matters more.


Presenters:

  • Quinn Norton
    Quinn Norton is a writer who likes to hang out in the dead end alleys and rough neighborhood of the Internet. She started studying hackers in 1995, after a wasted youth of Usenet and BBSing. She was Wired's correspondent on Anonymous and the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012. These days, Quinn is a columnist for Medium and MaximumPC. She covers science, technology, copyright law, robotics, body modification, and medicine, but no matter how many times she tries to leave, she always comes back to hackers.

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