On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, Adam Back wrote:
Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> writes:
[Sidetrack: which is of course why PGP had to find another solution to present to those customers already using GAK. IMHO, and I can't help but be a bit surprised that I find myself in the minority on this issue, at least as far as the list is concerned. What PGP did was _elegant_.]
Wow, Lucky! I usually consider you to be spot on most such things, but I think you failed to hit the bulls-eye there; in fact I think you missed the dartboard entirely!
So I am told. Which is surprising to me, since usually I am told that that I am too "paranoid" and "uncompromising".
I thought it was you who was pointing out earlier the fallacy induced by the key escrow meme (escrowing transient communicatoins keys with governments or companies to recover data stored on frigging disks!) (Actually you applied it just to goverments but the argument extends to companies perfectly).
I can't help but see a difference between enforcing to encrypt to a default key and storing the user's key outright. IMHO, the former entails less potential for abuse.
(Notice Bruce Schneier's forward of a case of a GAKker already starting to crow about the demonstration of GAKware feasibility in PGP).
There are plenty of less GAK compliant things you can do than what they are doing. The anti-GAK design principles help to clarify thought in designing a full spectrum from mildly GAK resistant through to rabidly GAK-hostile. I would hope that PGP (and you lot at C2Net) will crank the setting up to mad dog rabid anti GAK mode with nested obfuscated interpreters interpreting each other interpreting instruction sequences to recover keys. And busting your butts to make your systems ergonomic and slick to the extent that the competitors GAKware products look like dried up turds in comparison. Deployment being probably the most important anti-GAK principle of all!
Amen to the latter. I honestly don't see what PGP could have done better and still achieved deployment in companies that keep copies of all employees keys *today*. And yes, I think what PGP is doing is better than keeping copies of the keys of all employees. Anyway, I now have access to the entire PGP 5.5 system and will subject it to thorough analysis. Methinks many people arecurrently rendering opinions on a design they haven't even seen yet. Certainly, the part of PGP's SMTP agent that prevents you from screwing up by accidentaly sending sensitive email unencrypted stands a good chance of being installed at my site. [Can we all agree that this is a useful feature]? More than once, I failed to encrypt an email that I meant to encrypt. As for C2 and GAK: as Lucky Green, I speak _only_ for myself. And I can therefore say that if my employer was to imlement GAK, I would quit the day I found out about it. It isn't going to happen. -- Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to> PGP encrypted email preferred. "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"