by TeMPOraL | 2026-01-24 09:43:10+00:00
> Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours".

Okay, then take sharing your PINs with your spouse. Or for that matter, account passwords or phone unlock patterns. It's a perfectly normal thing that many people (including myself) do, because it enables ad-hoc delegation. "Honey, can you copy those photos to my laptop and send them to godparents?", asks my wife as she hands me her phone and runs to help our daughter with something - implicitly trusting me with access to her phone, thumbdrive, Windows account, e-mail account, and WhatsApp/Messenger accounts.

This kind of ad-hoc requests happen for us regularly, in both directions, without giving it much of a thought[0]. It's common between couples, variants of that are also common within family (e.g. grandparents delegating most of computer stuff to their adult kids on an ad-hoc basis), and variants of that also happen regularly in workplaces[1], despite the whole corporate and legal bureaucracy trying its best to prevent it[2].

> Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.

But Microsoft issued your copy of Windows and Bitlocker and is the one responsible for your data getting encrypted. It's obvious for people to seek recourse with them. This is how it works in every industry other than tech, which is why I'm a supporter of governments actually regulating in requirements for tech companies to offer proper customer support, and stop with the "screw up managing 2FA recovery keys, lose your account forever" bullshit.

> Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust.

As it should be. As it works everywhere, except tech, and especially except in the minds of security aficionados.

> Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders.

Point being, if enough right people want the nukes to be launched, the nukes will be launched. This is about the highest degree of responsibility on the planet, and relevant systems do not have the property of "lose the encryption key we told you 5 years ago to write down, and it's mathematically proven that no one can ever access the system anymore". It would be stupid to demand that.

That's the difference between infosec industry and real life: in real life, there is always a way to recover. Infosec is trying to normalize data and access being fundamentally unrecoverable after even a slightest fuckup, which is a degree of risk individuals and society have not internalized yet, and are not equipped to handle.

> Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours?

Yes. For normal people, Microsoft is not a threat actor here. Nor is the government. Microsoft is offering a feature that keeps your data safe from thieves and stalkers (and arguably even organized crime), but that doesn't require you to suddenly treat your laptop with more care than you treat your government ID. They can do this, because for users of this feature, Microsoft is a trusted party.

Ultimately, that's what security aficionados and cryptocurrency people don't get: the world runs on trust. Trust is a feature.

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[0] - Though less and less of that because everyone and their dog now wants to require 2FA for everything. Instead of getting the hint that passwords are not meant to identify a specific individual, they're doubling down and tying every other operation to a mobile phone, so delegating desktop operations often requires handing over your phone as well, defeating the whole point. This is precisely what I mean by the industry not recognizing or supporting the concept of delegation of authority.

[1] - The infamous practice of writing passwords on post-it notes isn't just because of onerous password requirements, it's also a way to facilitate temporary delegation of authority. "Can you do X for me? Password is on a post-it in the top drawer."

[2] - GDPR or not, I still heard from doctors I know personally that sharing passwords to access patient data is common, and so is bringing some of it back home on a thumb drive, to do some work after hours. On the one hand, this creates some privacy risks for patient (and legal risk for hospitals) - but on the other hand, these doctors don't do it because they hate GDPR or their patients. They do it because it's the only way they can actually do their jobs effectively. If rules were actually enforced to prevent it, people would die. This is what I mean when I say that security advice is often dumb and out of touch with reality, and ignored for very good reasons.