Here, I'll speed it up for you with this conclusion:
Unless people are downloading from source, verifying signed checksums, and building their crypto applications from source they are just as susceptible to any of the issues that browser crypto is.
Prebuilt executable? Can't be trusted. A modified version could have been substituted at download time for a particular user.
Web site where signed checksums are published? Can't be trusted. It could have been hacked or altered.
Checksum embedded in executable which checks itself at run time? Can't be done.
Trust is the issue. Trust NEVER goes away. The only way to know for sure is if you compile all your own code. But wait, remember Ken Thompson on Trusting Trust? You had better be building your own compilers as well...
So basically you're saying that no one but computer experts who build their entire toolchain from scratch should be using any sort of application that uses cryptography.
Unless people are downloading from source, verifying signed checksums, and building their crypto applications from source they are just as susceptible to any of the issues that browser crypto is.
Prebuilt executable? Can't be trusted. A modified version could have been substituted at download time for a particular user.
Web site where signed checksums are published? Can't be trusted. It could have been hacked or altered.
Checksum embedded in executable which checks itself at run time? Can't be done.
Trust is the issue. Trust NEVER goes away. The only way to know for sure is if you compile all your own code. But wait, remember Ken Thompson on Trusting Trust? You had better be building your own compilers as well...
So basically you're saying that no one but computer experts who build their entire toolchain from scratch should be using any sort of application that uses cryptography.