This is why raw symetric ciphers should be used, without headers. PGP should have an option to omit its headers when using the -c switch. People should not be forced to use outside programs such as stealth. In the absence of cryptanalysis, the output of a symetric cipher looks like random bytes. Every one should have a hardware RNG on their computer. "I am sorry your honor, that is a file of random numbers that I was using to check the output of my RNG." Or "I am sorry your honor that is a one-time pad I was planning to use." Or how about the purloined letter method? A few years back, a hack to PGP was published, which gave the user the option of directly controling the idea key used when encrypting/decrypting with RSA. There even was a option to make the idea key used in encrypting key wrong (that is, different than specified in the encrypted RSA message). "I am sorry your honor, that file is encrypted so that only obiwan@galaxy.far.far.away can decrypt. It is too bad that obiwan is outside the jusisdiction of the court." (But in fact I can decrypt by directly specifying the idea key.) By using the wrong idea key, I can fix it so that in the unlikely event that someone finds obiwan, obiwan finds that his secret key does not work. (Because the key decrypted by RSA is wrong.) With a little thought. you could change the above senerio to use obiwan@alpha.c2.org and fix it so that obiwan does not actually exist, and his secret key has been destroyed. (Create obiwan@alpha.c2.org, but fixit so that his reply block points off into the weeds. Create a public/secret PGP keys for obiwan and send the public key to the public key servers, using remailers. Using remailers, publish a few signed articles in obiwan's name. Then wipe obiwan's secret key with pgp -w.) You can now claim that you started a private encrypted conversation with obiwan@alpha.c2.org. Who unfortunately can not be found.