At 8:31 AM -0700 6/12/97, Bill Frantz wrote:
IMHO - What you are really signing is the binding between the data associated with the key (usually an email address) and the key. You are saying that the secret key holder is (one of the) person(s) who has access to that account, and not some man in the middle in the middle. If you ask to see Lucky Green's, or Futplex's, or Black Unicorn's picture ID, you will either see a forgery or an ID issued by an organization not interested in birth certificates.
I am fairly often accused of being arrogant, of being a "know it all." I have never claimed to be an expert on PGP, and I certainly am not. I use the MacPGP version which became available in '92, and will eventually star t working with PGP 5.x (which I have, and have installed, but not spent much time with). I generated a 1024-bit key in '92, right after PGP 2.0 appeared, and participated in a key signing, etc., shortly thereafter. It happened that my ISP at that time had just changed from Portal to Netcom. (Now it's "got.net", a fairly typical local provider of non-shell ISP services.) I can't understand (hint: someone please explain) why I get so many requests to send the "tcmay@got.net" key, as opposed to the "tcmay@netcom.com" key so widely available. I thought the key signings were about the Person Widely Known as "Tim May" being associated with the key signed, not some temporary e-mail address. My binding was between the key, and "me." Those who wanted to send messages to "me" could assume that only "I" could read it. The address "tcmay@netcom.com" vs. "tcmay@got.net" is not central. Any concern that "tcmay@got.net" is somehow not the keyholder of that '92 key is a nonissue. If the keyserver databases focus on such ephemera as the current ISP account, then they are focussing on the wrong things. Am I missing something central? --Tim May, whose e-mail deliverer has changed a few times, but whose key remains constant. Which is more important? There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."