It's 2014. Are we there yet?

[John Clizbe]

Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>> The “secure communications” paradigm of course spans a whole spectrum
>> from “I don’t give a ****” to “I’ll do anything to protect my
>> communications, including giving away my first born”. I suspect the
>> “average Joe user” in 2014 is slightly above the former, but way below
>> the latter. Without going to the other end of the spectrum, what will
>> make adoption of secure communications a bit more palatable to the
>> “average Joe user”?
> 
> Every year or so this subject comes up, and my answers are unchanged
> from last time: start by reading up on academic papers studying this
> exact problem.  For a while John Clizbe and I kept a list of good
> papers, but I have to confess I haven't been keeping up on the latest
> literature.  Still, our last list is pretty good reading.
> 
> (These selections come from both John and me, but John is the one who
> assembled them into proper cite format -- thanks, John.  For the
> original message, see "Re: what is killing PKI?" on this mailing list,
> posted on 24 Aug 2012.)
> 
> =====
Oh yeah, THAT thread. There hasn't been much new work that I've seen.
Certainly nothing invalidating any of these.

The list along with available from links:

       Gaw, S., Felten, E. W., and Fernandez-Kelly, P. 2006.
       Secrecy, flagging, and paranoia: adoption criteria in encrypted email.
       In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
       Systems (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, April 22 - 27, 2006).
       R. Grinter, T. Rodden, P. Aoki, E. Cutrell, R. Jeffries, and
       G. Olson, Eds. CHI '06. ACM, New York, NY, 591-600.
       DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1054972.1055069

Available at: http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps223/Spring09/Gaw%2006.pdf

I would also add

       Garfinkel, S. L., Margrave, D., Schiller, J. I., Nordlander, E.,
       and Miller, R. C. 2005. How to make secure email easier to use.
       In _Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
       Systems_ (Portland, Oregon, USA, April 02 - 07, 2005).
       CHI '05. ACM, New York, NY, 701-710.
       DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1054972.1055069

Available at: http://simson.net/ref/2004/chi2005_smime_submitted.pdf

And a perennial favorite:

       Steve Sheng, Levi Broderick, Colleen Alison Koranda, and Jeremy J.
       Hyland. Why Johnny Still Can’t Encrypt: Evaluating the Usability of
       Email Encryption Software. Poster session, 2006 Symposium On Usable
       Privacy and Security, Pittsburgh, PA, July 2006.
       http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng-poster_abstract.pdf

And its predecessor:

       Alma Whitten and J.D. Tygar. Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt: A Usability
       Evaluation of PGP 5.0. In Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Security
       Symposium, Washington, DC, August 1999.
       http://bit.ly/OaEeTD

> > Everyone on this mailing list has their own pet theory for why PKI
> > adoption is so lousy.  All of us are probably wrong.  However,
> > published, peer-reviewed studies of PKI adoption and the forces driving
> > and inhibiting them are probably less wrong.

The peer reviewed literature has many, many, references on this topic.
They're a great place to start when assumptions and pet theories take root.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=email+encryption

++++++++++++

2nd msg:Chatting with Kristen [Fiskerstrand], he pointed me to

Usability of Security: A Case Study. Alma Whitten and J. D. Tygar.
Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science technical report CMU-CS-98-155,
December 1998.

Abstract:
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA361032

'The unmotivated user property' and 'The abstraction property' are
particularly worth noting and keeping in mind.
-John
-- 
John P. Clizbe                      Inet: John (a) Gingerbear DAWT net
SKS/Enigmail/PGP-EKP                  or: John ( @ ) Enigmail DAWT net
FSF Assoc #995 / FSFE Fellow #1797  hkp://keyserver.gingerbear.net  or
     mailto:pgp-public-keys at gingerbear.net?subject=HELP

Q:"Just how do the residents of Haiku, Hawai'i hold conversations?"
A:"An odd melody / island voices on the winds / surplus of vowels"

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