PGP problems or willingness to use PGP

[Ralph Sanford]

A couple of years ago some of my friends and I (all former army officers)
decided to stop talking about using PGP and to actually load it on to our
systems and use PGP for email plus other encryption.  There was a bit of
a learning curve as we did not know of anyone else actually using PGP to
be able to provide us with any hints or suggestion.  With a little
experience PGP became relatively seamless in operation and we now
routinely use it and occaisonally introduce someone else to PGP. 

When we initially setup PGP a particular friend of ours thought this was
all a waste of time and effort.  This friend was still in the army as a
logistics and supply officer (despite him not being a combat arms type we
still considered him a friend :-)  ).  He would frequently be away from
his office for periods of time when he was working off-base or visiting
outlying reserve units.  He had arranged with his office to send
non-critical correspondence to his private email address so he could deal
 with the mundane and routine before he returned to his office.  After
doing this for several months my friend is at a Chrstmas party and runs
into someone who works at his ISP.  This ISP person says how nice it is
to actually be able to face to a name and then proceeds to ask my friend
how the army finally resolved the shortage of certain spare parts for the
logistics trucks!  My friend is royally p*****d off with the ISP and
himself.  The next day he has an new ISP and and installs PGP.   HE is
now truly a PGP zealot.

While nothing of any significance was compromised in this situation, my
friend is now a strong believer that all email should be encrypted.  I
remain convinced that it is better to use PGP than to wish that I had
used PGP.  Installing and using PGP after the fact is too late, and you
will not know until after it has happened that someone has been reading
your email.


Ralph Sanford        -        If your government does not trust you,
rsanford@telusplanet.net    -    should you trust your government?

+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
For my public PGP key send email with subject: "Send_PGP_Key"
RSA Key  -  0x434B4825                     DH/DSS Key  -  0x7A1BEA01
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+