This is waaay too complicated

I’m fairly technologically literate and so when it comes to something involved, like setting up some complex thing, I can usually piece my way through the process, and have enough troubleshooting skills such that, if something unexpected happens, I can usually diagnose and deal with it.

But I’m also very aware that this is not the case for most people who use information appliances.

Recently I set up my e-mail client – the eminent Mozilla Thunderbird – to use encryption for a couple of my mail e-mail accounts. The tools to do this are easily available, free and Open Source, however the whole process, when one steps back and looks at it, is not something the average person is going to try to schlep through. The “Quick Start” guide for the Thunderbird add-on seems more like a dissertation. It is anything but quick – through no fault of the author.

For too long things like security and encryption have been kind of like the dust that people just don’t want to properly deal with and end up sweeping under the rug. But its time for security to really come out of the shadow and be seriously acknowledged in its own right as being integral to using information appliances. Security should be totally integrated into the process of using such appliances to the point where it is not even questioned.

I know that bright minds may look at something like the Thunderbird add-on for encryption and think of a way to perhaps try to streamline the process for setting it up. But what needs to happen goes way beyond that. There needs to be not just a leap of one step ahead but of several steps ahead. It needs to be such that when one clicks a link and installs Thunderbird, encryption is integrated into the setup process such that the user shouldn’t even have to click any extra options. It should just be automatically set up.