Re: Sen. Patrick Leahy's PGP key now avail.

At 9:36 PM 5/2/96, Will Rodger wrote:
>Wanna write the good Senator on the occasion of his newest bill? His pub
>key's out there. (URL is  http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-commands.html#submit/
>)

Why does anyone need his public key to communicate with Senator Leahy? If
it's for sender-anonymity, this does not do it, though other tools
(remailers) do.

Unless the information is "secret," why bother? It adds extra time at his
office's end (you don't think Leahy types in his password to PGP do you?),
and it accomplishes little.

>From a personal viewpoint, I'm glad my key is no longer very accessible. I
used to get PGP-encrypted messages which had no earthly reason to be
encrypted, except that people apparently wanted to practice their PGP
skills. (For those who sent me items that had a reason to be encrypted, you
know who you are and you know this comment does not apply to you.)

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Timothy C. May writes:
> Why does anyone need his public key to communicate with Senator Leahy? If
> it's for sender-anonymity, this does not do it, though other tools
> (remailers) do.
> 
> Unless the information is "secret," why bother?

I would answer Tim, but I suspect that he would ignore something I
might say. I will therefore quote Philip Zimmermann.

   Perhaps you think your E-mail is legitimate enough that encryption is
   unwarranted.  If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to
   hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? 
   Why not submit to drug testing on demand?  Why require a warrant for
   police searches of your house?  Are you trying to hide something? 
   You must be a subversive or a drug dealer if you hide your mail
   inside envelopes.  Or maybe a paranoid nut.  Do law-abiding citizens
   have any need to encrypt their E-mail?

   What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use
   postcards for their mail?  If some brave soul tried to assert his
   privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. 
   Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. 
   Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone
   protects most of their mail with envelopes.  So no one draws suspicion
   by asserting their privacy with an envelope.  There's safety in
   numbers.  Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used
   encryption for all their E-mail, innocent or not, so that no one drew
   suspicion by asserting their E-mail privacy with encryption.  Think
   of it as a form of solidarity.

Never thought I would see the day where Tim stopped being a
Cypherpunk. Everyone mark your calendars.

Perry

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> Unless the information is "secret," why bother? It adds extra time at his  
> office's end (you don't think Leahy types in his password to PGP do you?),
> and it accomplishes little.

I agree with you to this point... Personally, I don't encrypt or even sign
anything I send out, unless there is a reason to. For most of the mail I
send out, I don't care if third parties read it, and most of it is so   
unimportant that if it were altered (highly unlikely) I wouldn't care. In
fact, I can't recall the last time I encrypted a message (but I've signed
a couple recently).

> >From a personal viewpoint, I'm glad my key is no longer very accessible. I
> used to get PGP-encrypted messages which had no earthly reason to be 
> encrypted, except that people apparently wanted to practice their PGP

Now that's just plain un-cypherpunk of you. If people want to use PGP, let
them use PGP! There are so many scripts etc. out there to make using PGP
almost transparent, so decrypting your mail shouldn't be any harder than  
pressing a couple keys and typing in your passphrase. (I know, the
passphrase is the killer.)

Whatever happened to "Cypherpunks write code" and getting crypto out
there? It's not enough for it to just be out there, people have to feel
free to use it. Making your pgp key "no longer very accessible" doesn't
exactly support that goal.


Sorry if this is the 1001st reply you recieve.

=====================================================================
| Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/)    |
| Email: steve@edmweb.com   Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ |
| PGP Fingerprint: 11 C8 9D 1C D6 72 87 E6  8C 09 EC 52 44 3F 88 30 |
|              -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, IANAL. --                 |
===================================================================:)

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On Fri, 3 May 1996, Steve wrote:

> > Unless the information is "secret," why bother? It adds extra time at his
> > office's end (you don't think Leahy types in his password to PGP do you?),
> > and it accomplishes little.
> 
> I agree with you to this point... Personally, I don't encrypt or even sign
> anything I send out, unless there is a reason to. For most of the mail I
> send out, I don't care if third parties read it, and most of it is so
> unimportant that if it were altered (highly unlikely) I wouldn't care. In
> fact, I can't recall the last time I encrypted a message (but I've signed
> a couple recently).

Since I use UNIX, I have set up the mailing program so that it actually takes
extra effort to not sign something.  I have nothing to lose by signing my
e-mail messages.  Yes, I know that not everyone in the world uses UNIX and
I don't know if there is a transparent mailing interface for Windoze or
Macintosh.  As for encryption, I encrypt a lot of my messages because if I
only encrypted "secret" messages, that would automatically draw suspicion
to every encrypted message that I send.  I also always use ssh to log into my
UNIX shell account.  I know the probability of someone intercepting my
password is low, but again I have nothing to lose.

> Now that's just plain un-cypherpunk of you. If people want to use PGP, let
> them use PGP! There are so many scripts etc. out there to make using PGP
> almost transparent, so decrypting your mail shouldn't be any harder than
> pressing a couple keys and typing in your passphrase. (I know, the
> passphrase is the killer.)

As I said above, there is plenty of integration between PGP and UNIX mailers,
but such is not the case for Windoze and Macintosh.

- -- Mark

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
markm@voicenet.com              | finger -l for PGP key 0xf9b22ba5
http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | bd24d08e3cbb53472054fa56002258d5
"The concept of normalcy is just a conspiracy of the majority" -me


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Tim May wrote:

> Unless the information is "secret," why bother? ...

I think its worth the bother as a necesary step in the process of making
email match people's naive expections: that they are sending sealed
letters, not postcards. I think it's particularly valuble in this case
to reinforce the point in the Senator's mind that some of us want
envelopes for our email, and that we require the technology needed to
acomplished this.

jps
--
Jack P. Starrantino   jpps@voicenet.com   http://www.voicenet.com