-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11:56 AM 12/6/95 EST, SBinkley@atitech.ca wrote:
I heard a while back about being able to "split" up a PGP key. I suppose you could, with some variant of Shamir's secret- sharing scheme. I'm not familiar with any specific applications that do this. (But that's irrelevant.)
What about splitting up the key into many parts, and giving them out to multiple INDEPENDANT agencies. ie: One piece goes to the FBI, one to the NSA, one to some other committee, and so on. That way, no goverment body could just tap your conversations without getting approval from others, and gaining the pieces of your key. That still doesn't address the basic issue - that the government has NO RIGHT to access our _private_ keys. If you want to assume a fairly paranoid threat model, each of these different agencies will instantly combine their parts to generate the whole key. If you trust the government, it might work. Personally, I trust the government about as far as I can throw the typical Man In Black.
Dave -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMMXoeAwyfvCScyE5AQEFqQQAihutub3GQDi/FtiDkAfxgb8dzFAEnZ/H LD588iuIxX3G3M0fLmAkRuUKE7fdhExkAO1IYFwH0oM/bI8KdSrY/RyeqnQFRwVo /Vvr6nwVMdLP94Vt9Gi4QXJ4dVBHXwfvRUm5/HdLqqh8UH2HLKO1jdt82H539paM ZhiZkMmNlCs= =0kWW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----- David E. Smith, c/o Southeast Missouri State University 1210 Towers South, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63701-4745 +1(573)339-3814, "dsmith@midwest.net", PGP ID 0x92732139 http://www.midwest.net/scribers/dsmith/