PGP signatures

[Paul Wiener]

Maybe we can make everybody happy. Those who are protesting the use of PGP on
the list are complaining about the signatures they see. The issues of
aesthetics and bandwidth have been raised.

Perhaps all PGP users should stop signing their routine messages, but should
encrypt them instead. That would eliminate the extra consumption of bandwidth
and those unsightly PGP signatures at the bottoms of the messages. Non-PGP
users wouldn't be trouble by that pesky message content either. For those of
us who *do* use PGP, the fact that the message decrypted with the sender's
public key would probably be as good a confirmation of the sender's identity
and the message's intactness as the sender's signature.

On Sat, 24 Apr 1999 12:38:44 +0200, Joerg Bencke wrote:

>On Thu, 22 Apr 1999 14:47:49 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:
>
>>    But reverse it.  If everyone sent a postcard and someone sent an envelope
>>people would wonder what is in it, what is so important that it needs to be
>>hidden?
>>
>>    In the electronic world the privacy envelope is the encryption.  Right
>>now everyone is sending mail with postcards.  Only "important" stuff is sent
>>via envelopes.  I am of the opinion that everything should be sent via
>>envelopes and be signed, just as in the paper world.  This is because privacy
>>is our right and unless exercised to its fullest it draws attention at the
>>times you don't want it to.
>
>I second that. Call me paranoid, if you want. But if you watched Will
>Smtih as Enemy No1, and know how far technical possibilities are today,
>you might reconsider. It will never happen ? Well MS already introduced
>PC- and User IDs and just collected them. What makes you believe they
>could not monitor all traffic, that comes through their Internet-sites
>both going to, from and relaying ? How can you control, what IE5 or the
>lastest gimmick you downloaded sends, when your online ? With Email, you
>can control it a bit.
>
>Check out Happy99 or Melissa : If you know Steve always signs his messages
>and then you get a happy99.exe in an unsigned, stupid-subject, no-body
>message without sign ... You should start wondering.
>
>Also, I might change a famous acronym (is that the word ?), Freedom is the
>Freedom to encrypt mail :-) Do I sound idealistic now ? Well, I could say
>the majoriy of the US-Americans seems to think Freedom is the Freedom to
>have a AK47 in the kitchendrawer (ok is overdone, but you see the point
>?),
>but that could start a flame war making hell look a nice cool place, so I
>wont even think it.
>
>Well, I think everyone should encrypt mail. Unfortunately, I know very few
>people who use PGP, well they also use IE4 and Active x and now virus
>scanner ...
>
>Josch
>---        !Protect your privacy, use Email encryption!
>Joerg Bencke                           Joerg@Bencke.de
>PGP Key availabla via Keyserver.    KeyID = 0x815B5EC5
>Fingerprint = 2CD6 9887 3DE1 15F5  C77E FC33 5EBF 96E6
>


--
___________
Paul Wiener

paulish@paulish.com
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KJ6AV@callsign.net
pw@i.am
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