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I think it's a bad idea to require signatures on the list, or even to penalize people who don't use them. People aren't signing their posts because it's too much of a hassle to do it from a dial up, netcom style, account, not because they're insufficiently committed to the cause.
Is it just me, or does this come up every few months?
The real solution is to try to build tools which will make it so easy to use crypto that there's simply no reason not to do it.
They are already there - in elm and pine, as well as many others.
This leaves the problem of passphrases for outgoing signatures and automatically decrypting incoming mail, but I think that cfs will let me kludge something together which will get around this.
No need to kludge anything. Take a good look at the PGP docs - they will let you do exactly what you want.
(My situation is a little unusual, because I'm running linux on a pc which is connected to the net via a static slip account. I don't think this would work well in other situations.)
I'm running Linux here, and have run it both as static/dynamic SLIP, and hung (well!) off a T1 line.
o talked to the rest of the email universe without difficulty, and which uses standard unix software
o would automatically use crypto when sending mail to a list of email addresses, and which could automatically handle incoming crypto
o would be reasonably secure when it was powered off
This last one is really the only advantage to running cfs, IMO. Here's the set of scripts I use here. Others use more sophisticated ones, but I'm not into shell programming ;} pgpview will decrypt to the screen, vie will edit then encrypt, vis will edit then sign. They are intended to be used from within elm. #! /bin/sh # # Created by shar, version 0.5 - 04/10/91 # # This is a shell archive, meaning: # 1. Remove everything about the #! /bin/sh line. # 2. Save the resulting text in a file. # 3. Execute the file with /bin/sh to create: # # length name # ------ ------------------------------------- # 28 pgpview # 379 vie # 199 vis # # # Archive number 1 # This archive created Tue Nov 29 05:04:46 1994 # echo "shar: extracting pgpview - (28 characters)" if test -f 'pgpview' ; then echo shar: will not over-write existing file pgpview else sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'pgpview' Xpgp +batchmode -m | less -c SHAR_EOF if test 28 -ne "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" ; then echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file pgpview (should have been 28 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" characters) *****" fi fi touch 0823232194 pgpview chmod 0755 pgpview echo "shar: extracting vie - (379 characters)" if test -f 'vie' ; then echo shar: will not over-write existing file vie else sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vie' X# X# vie - like vi, but sign & encrypt with pgp X# Xsed -e 's/^> //g' $1 > $1.clr X# why doesn't pgp $1 $1.clr work? It should produce $1.clr... <sigh> Xpgp +force $1.clr $1 Xsed -e 's/^/> /g' $1.clr > $1 X/bin/rm -f $1.clr Xif [ "$EDITOR" == "" ] ; then X pico $1 Xelse X $EDITOR $1 Xfi Xclear XL=`logname` Xif [ "$L" = "erc" ] ; then X L=ecarp Xfi Xpgp -seta +clearsig=on -u $L $1 Xmv $1.asc $1 SHAR_EOF if test 379 -ne "`wc -c < 'vie'`" ; then echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vie (should have been 379 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vie'`" characters) *****" fi fi touch 0904203294 vie chmod 0755 vie echo "shar: extracting vis - (199 characters)" if test -f 'vis' ; then echo shar: will not over-write existing file vis else sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vis' X# X# vie - like vi, but sign with pgp X# Xif [ "$EDITOR" == "" ] ; then X pico $1 Xelse X $EDITOR $1 Xfi Xclear XL=`logname` Xif [ "$L" = "erc" ] ; then X L=ecarp Xfi Xpgp -sta +clearsig=on -u $L $1 Xmv $1.asc $1 SHAR_EOF if test 199 -ne "`wc -c < 'vis'`" ; then echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vis (should have been 199 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vis'`" characters) *****" fi fi touch 0801202294 vis chmod 0755 vis echo End of all shell archives exit 0 - -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi ** PGP encrypted email preferred! ** "What's the use of distant travel if only to discover - you're homeless in your heart." --Basia, "Yearning" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLtsLMiS9AwzY9LDxAQHTWgP/VAxadrlIIhH/QwqDUX1KtfnPd6UBh5kL rouCpajJj4BfFGk486gHOekVZcwTe19NDzUHXE78UDSIWytf1zuAZvf5b9bFgVkV lXxyaRJK4xIcYHUFTptumpCDRvAQi9ixMwI07K3rs4gzQNd4fgOqMZj7g08wOot9 64BnvLL/J10= =7WFV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----