At 8:08 PM 7/31/95, Dr. Fred said:
it is impractical to verify that there are no subtle back doors
Ah. I knew my undergraduate philosophy degree from good ol' Mizzou would come in handy some day. In the sophistry biz, the above is an informal fallacy. It's called a disproving a negative, more popularly called the "Flying Saucer" fallacy, as in, "prove to me that flying saucers (or PGP trap-doors) don't exist".
More accurately, you cannot prove a forall statement about an infinite set by demonstrating examples - but you can disprove it with a single refutation, however, your argument is incorrect in this context. Since computers current digital computers (and programs) are (close to) finite state machines, we can prove many forall statements. But even more to the point, it is the job of the person asking you to trust them to justify that trust. If you trust them with a less-than-adequate basis, you have only yourself to blame when you get burned.
I would put the rest of your rejoinder in the same class of tinker-toy logic, Doc.
That's me - a tinker-toy logician. But why do you believe that PGP can be trusted? Because someone told you so in email on an Internet forum? I would hate to bet billions of dollars a day and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on that judgement.
You're testing my patience. Feeling flush from my New Orleans road trip, I went out and bought the commercial version of Eudora, filter-feature and all, which means I'm just itching to test it. In other words, it means you are flirting with the kill-file, the bozo-filter, more rudely, a <plonk!ing>.
Ah!!! A threat. You should be aware that threatening homocide is a form of assault. I will be certain to tell the FBI your exact words... "the kill-file, the bozo-filter, more rudely, a <plonk!ing>." sounds to me (and may well sound to them) like a threat to commit murder.
Play nice, Doc, or don't play at all.
I am being nice, but you are not. Perhaps you should consider addressing the issues. -- -> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236