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11 Apr 2008

Return-to-work freelancer gets unceremoniously flamed in The Reg

El Reg invited me to do my first piece of frelance journalism for several years - an article about Microsoft’s acquisition of Stefan Brands’ U-Prove work. I was never a brilliant journalist and I’m a bit rusty; the piece was longwinded and late. The Reg’s readers give pretty short shrift to most things anyway.

In the dozen or so comments, readers are offended by the suggestion that Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary is a pretty smart woman. Anonymous Coward retorts, for example

Her utterances in post have been utterly without personality; and her entire career would fit better with the theory she’s an energetic loyalist slogger not an imaginitive thinker.

The fact is that few politicians would score that well in a test on tech issues which the average Reg reader would sail through. But they’re called on to apply themselves more or less to every issue Parliament debates or that their constituents come up with. They’re ultimate generalists. I can’t produce Jacqui Smith’s examn results to defend my remarks but I stand by the sentiment that you dont get to be Britain’s first woman Home Secretary without being a smart woman. Furthermore, we won’t get the chance to put to her how important these developments in Internet security and privacy are if we approach her in a dismissive and insulting way. We’ve got to the stage where the intelligent generalist needs to understand the importance of privacy-enhancing technologies in general and minimum disclosure tokens in particular. We need to think carefully how to engage in that conversation.

Meanwhile jubtastic1 and others haul me up, with some justification, for not explaining Dr Brands limited disclosure credentials very clearly. On rereading the article I think that’s a fair cop. Sorry! It’s not insulting to anyone to say 99.9% of us will never understand the maths of Stefan’s solutions - I have a maths A-level and I couldn’t even name the symbols in many of his equations let alone prove whether they add up correctly to something to which I can entrust my personal details online.

Stefan did patiently explain U-Prove to me in a new and different way with analogies based on soap bars with shapes stamped underneath. The problem, as I said, is that he’s solved an emerging problem which, though serious and real, has no simple analogy in the tangible world. Nor does his solution have an analogy in the visible and tangible world; a number of its benefits are counterintuitive.

I guess his video animations are a helpful explanation to which I should have linked earlier. But I have to make it clear again to those who want to _really_ understand his work I’m not the man who can help. I dont _really_ understand it. Anyway, it’s not me that matters, and the world’s cyptographers are not the only ones who matter. Jacqui Smith matters. Ollie Letwin understood it when a FIPR colleague and I explained it to him a few years ago (and a half-hour meeting lasted 90 minutes). The challenge is: how can we ensure the importance of this is put to the Home Secretary? How can it be done in a way that is persuasive?

• Posted by William Heath on 11/04/08 at 11:57am
• Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Political engagement
• Comments (2)  Permalink

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