How can we store metadata elegantly and make it meaningful to our work? How do we manage cryptographic keys while safeguarding our privacy?
Looking at the existing literature and the free, publicly available technology, there are several puzzles and clear lessons we can draw. I try to capture them here: - Privacy, cryptography and key management are inherently complex. - Privacy and security in the digital age are essential for our financial and political well‑being, and their importance grows over time. - The technology to mitigate these problems is free and accessible, but not widely adopted. - Public education, thoughtful design and compelling storytelling about these issues are essential parts of the security infrastructure and the civic health of a modern society.
# Narrative In *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*, just moments before Earth’s imminent destruction at the hands of the bureaucratic and merciless Vogons, the planet’s second‑most intelligent species—the dolphins—make their dramatic and mysterious exit. Long underestimated by humans, dolphins had been trying to warn us of the impending doom for some time, but we misinterpreted their efforts as amusing tricks and playful flips. As they vanish from our atmosphere, they leave behind one final, cryptic message to humanity: > “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”
Fish are important, and we view them as a symbol of our identity, privacy and the secrets we keep. It is through the playfulness and storytelling that we aim to contrubute to the outreach and public education around privacy issues.
# Practice Beyond narrative, we aim to put modern public‑key‑based cryptography (PKI) and identity management in the hands of all Hitchhikers. In this story we have: - Private Fish - Public Fish - Secret Fish Our goal is to use the literal image of a fish not simply as a symbol of the underlying technology but as an actual digital key that can be used to secure your data and identity online. Managing your keys becomes the task of managing these files, which you can visualise, understand and care for in familiar ways.