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Privacy technologies support the provision of online services while protecting user privacy. Cryptography lies at the heart of many such technologies, creating remarkable possibilities in terms of functionality while offering robust guarantees of data confidential- ity. The cryptography literature and discourse often represent that these technologies eliminate the need to trust service providers, i.e., they enable users to protect their privacy even against untrusted service providers. Despite their apparent promise, privacy technolo- gies have seen limited adoption in practice, and the most successful ones have been implemented by the very service providers these technologies purportedly protect users from. The adoption of privacy technologies by supposedly adversarial service providers highlights a mismatch between traditional models of trust in cryptography and the trust relationships that underlie deployed technologies in practice. Yet this mismatch, while well known to the cryptography and privacy communities, remains rela- tively poorly documented and examined in the academic literature— let alone broader media. This paper aims to fill that gap. Firstly, we review how the deployment of cryptographic tech- nologies relies on a chain of trust relationships embedded in the modern computing ecosystem, from the development of software to the provision of online services, that is not fully captured by tra- ditional models of trust in cryptography. Secondly, we turn to two case studies—web search and encrypted messaging—to illustrate how, rather than removing trust in service providers, cryptographic privacy technologies shift trust to a broader community of secu- rity and privacy experts and others, which in turn enables service providers to implicitly build and reinforce their trust relationship with users. Finally, concluding that the trust models inherent in the traditional cryptographic paradigm elide certain key trust relation- ships underlying deployed cryptographic systems, we highlight the need for organizational, policy, and legal safeguards to address that mismatch, and suggest some directions for future work.
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This content will become publicly available on March 25, 2026
Co-production of climate services: challenges and enablers
Climate change is often connected to an increase in weather extreme frequencies and severity, demanding an increased necessity in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, adapting to and building resilience to these changes and impacts. This happens in a background of climate variability that already impacts several climate-sensitive sectors. There is an urgent need for fit-for-purpose climate services and service professionals to support these mitigation and adaptation efforts. Co-development of climate services can enhance their usefulness (context-specific and fit for purpose), usability (easy access and handling), and usage (transfer and upscale) by ensuring appropriate and iterative engagement between climate service providers and users, development of timely, reliable and usable products, and the provision of services to users in a truly accessible manner. Achieving co-development asks for reframing and scaled-up transdisciplinary, sustained, and multidirectional approaches between a diversity of information users and providers. For these processes, it is key to also address and further minimize or overcome barriers of co-production, while supporting enabling and accelerating mechanisms, better preparation of climate services providers including National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, private actors, civil society, and academia for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work, enhanced individual and institutional capacity development and governance mechanisms.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2019625
- PAR ID:
- 10611094
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers in Climate
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Climate
- Volume:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 2624-9553
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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