-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Feel free to skip to 'Actual Question:' below. I am one to succumb to the assumed benefits of overkill. I like the fact that everyone's use of crypto can cause each individual transmission to become less suspicious to prying eyes. I would love knowing that the govt. spent billions of CPU cycles on one of my transmissions only to find my softball schedule. We could lure them by making our subject lines 'Fertilizer-Bomb Recipe' or 'CHILDPORN.GIF Attached', not condoning either, of course. I have a 2048-bit PgP key and pseudorandom a/n character generator, from which I chose a large passphrase similar to: f4VnI1G1mGcwTZ1vGoyPwN4NLojF8Ee9ff1aicOGn87x0nwwHhJUo6XSYKEawRne (Yes, cut-n-paste, but my only in-house threat is my wife.) Actual Question: Does the length and randomness of a passphrase contribute at all to the overall security of a cryptosystem? Thanks in advance! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMfJn0HychImXHmeJAQFpeQf/cLkFsELVEOquVseK7m6Ze+R1zFzkrM8G T8M4NTdoOALSQKY5Xjj/YHPt9iGY28U5FAPJt/v77YFsewiLxskcJn5fd6G2wX2j gneSXat0ExIMdLkUuIFDZl2tUny7bBgj2AimIK2Pd0BVlYT8RXPaDhpeWjmHKZpg vbZaS4yuSSFBy8oucfjO7ivShcraRwIG0Rq6/GCXuhT6Oi0EOaCUWJ+ofYVSqMkb Jsz9ElMVVVFc+caPwYn5mSVy8Xj3u9UxKOPPoXOpEpJ3gGPsuoiemcwcB/F1VQ34 +uC1YtdndAAu5jRU5JCWYbqYA+BiWY4K/vl9jaJ29BKjLiVfKrU+wA== =W00K -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- vagab0nd@sd.cybernex.net http://ww2.sd.cybernex.net/~vagab0nd/index.html Visit web page for public key.