Transparent Email

[Eric Hughes]

   From: Alex Strasheim <alex at omaha.com>

   I know, but I'm a little squeamish about leaving my keys unprotected.

Then make up separate insecure keys for transmission to the host.  Add
an attribution which says to disbelieve any signature made with this
key.

   Also, I'm not very fond of the idea that encrypted email would be 
   decrypted when it got here and left in plaintext on the mail spool.

Some protection is better than no protection.  Protection in transit
is still protection, even if it is not universal.

   Otherwise it
   wouldn't be practical to use this setup in an office or school
   environment, because anyone could boot your machine with a floppy and
   steal your key. 

That's a different threat than interception of mail, remember.  A
partial solution is better than none.

One of PGP's many problems is that it's policies for key use are quite
restricted.  There's no way, for example, to make a receive-only key.

Eric

rom owner-cypherpunks  Tue Nov 29 23:24:34 1994
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From: tcmay at netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
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Subject: Re: "You aren't following the _rules_!"
To: jrochkin at cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 23:23:12 -0800 (PST)
Cc: cypherpunks at toad.com
In-Reply-To: <ab0128ce01021004740d@[132.162.201.201]> from "Jonathan Rochkind" at Nov 29, 94 01:56:30 pm
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Jonathan Rochkind wrote:

> Which was admitteedlyu your main point; until there is a _need_ for crypto,
> it's not going to be used.
> Because premail makes it incredibly easy to use PGP on a unix box. And, for
> that matter, the Eudora/PGP applescritps make it incredibly easy to use PGP
> on a mac.  And there are some people working on an applescript that will

Not if you read mail on-line, while also reading News. 

> automate using remailers on a mac too.    But ease of use appearantly isn't
> enough; no matter how easy it gets to use, it's still going to have some
> cost to the user over not using it. Even if the cost is only having to wait
> the 1.5 seconds it takes your machine to decrypt/encrypt a message.  Unless
> there's a use for it, people won't be willing to spend that 1.5 seconds per
> message.

I strongly doubt that _anyone_ is not using crypto because of
something so trivial as a .5 or 1.5 or even 4.5 second delay. No, the
issues are that handling encryped messages is, for too many of us,
_much_ more than a 1.5 seconds per message delay. Several of us have
outlined the steps.

Are we just lazy? No, in some cases we're at home, pretty much
relegated to dial-ups like Netcom. In other cases, on VAXes, or
terminals, or AVIIONs. Whatever. Again, described repeatedly.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay at netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
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