PGP problems

[Brian Morrison]

On Tue, 01 Aug 2000 18:50:40 +0100, David Gaskill wrote:

>On Mon, 31 Jul 2000 22:27:45 -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:
>
>>Like you alluded to, everyone should use PGP, but no
>>one does. I believe this is because it is very complicated to
>>understand.
>
>I believe that most people don't use PGP simpler because it is 
>unnecessaryand not because it is difficult. 
>
>I conduct a large proportion of my business over the Internet. I receive 
>and send large numbers of e-mails. If anybody bothered to hack my 
>mailbox most of the stuff would be completely meaningless to them. The 
>hacker would be in danger of expiring from boredom before he had read 
>very far. 
>
>As a project consultant my mail is probably more diverse than most but 99 
>per cent of it would be incomprehensible to a third party. 
>
>It may of course be that most of the members of this list are senior 
>government  officials in sensitive posts or are able to cause the world's 
>markets to plunge by merely touching a keyboard but my correspondance 
>is so boring that many people might pay not to read my e-mails... 
>
>I can't think of any other reason for your suggestion that everybody 
>should use PGP

Is all your postal correspondence by post card? Do you close the
curtains while undressing? Do you close the door when using the
lavatory? Do you wear clothes in the street?

PGP is no different from those examples, just because it doesn't matter
to you that people *could* read your mail doesn't mean that they
*should be able* to.

Note that the UK government has just given itself the right to trawl
through medical data to try to identify unregistered illegal
immigrants, and to trawl supermarket loyalty card data to determine
whether people are cheating on their tax returns. Being able to read
private correspondence is all part of the process of making everyone
aware of everyone else's business, the process of putting them back
into the public sphere where the eyes of the tribe can ensure that they
aren't doing anything that 'society' doesn't like. Civilisation is the
process of separating people from the tyranny of exposure to everyone
else's opinion of what they should be doing and replacing it with the
individual's choice.

If I had a pound for every time I heard the phrase "Only those with
something to hide need worry" I wouldn't need to work for a living. See
you in the gulags.....


-- 
Brian Morrison                                  bdm@fenrir.demon.co.uk
              do you know how far this has gone?
               just how damaged have I become?
                                      'Even Deeper' by Nine Inch Nails