I was walking down a stairwell at work today, and there were two employees who I didn’t know standing at the foot of the stairs, looking at a laptop screen. When they saw me walking down the stairs (like ya do), they started whispering and closed the laptop screen so I couldn’t see.
Like it was on my agenda?
I’m not saying they aren’t allowed to have private data, but you would think a public stairwell might not be the most appropriate place to share it. Maybe an office, or a conference room, or some place out of the way that wouldn’t be heavily trafficked.
When I was at UNO and I had a desk in the tech building with my back to a window, the head Computer Privacy professor came in to chat with me. “You need to keep the blinds closed. Anyone standing outside can just look right in and see what is on your computer screen.” He would probably freak out at the notion of sharing private data in the stairwell.
you should also be using whole-disk-encryption, web proxies, traffic obfustication, GPG email and LCD monitors you can only read with special glasses. Just so you know.
Thanks J. Or should I call you Blaine?
[They’re listening]
Hey, I think GPG email at least is a good idea. Do people even realize that regular email isn’t even encrypted? Using Thunderbird+GPG is easy cake. I’m sure a similar experience can be had with Microsoft products, but it never really caught on. Is it that it’s too much of a hassle to find someone’s public key before sending them an email?
I think it would actually be a very noble venture for the usability folks to figure out how to make the process more usable so regular people will do it. Better yet, can we make it so usable that people don’t even know they’re using it?