Encrypting / Signing the mail subject?

[Robert J. Hansen]

> It's just a bad workaround.

It's one that's worked quite well for the past 70-odd years in the
military community, since even before there was such a thing as email.

If you want to call something with a 70-year track record a "bad
workaround," well, that's on you.

> Many people (including me) feel it's an unnecessary technical
> burden.

It's not a technical burden.  It doesn't involve any change to
technology.  This is a policy issue, not a technical issue.

> YMMV

Then you're doing it wrong.

>> rather, what's of interest is that one message belongs to the same
>>  thread as another message, and for that purpose a randomly-chosen
>>  identifier works quite well.
> 
> Message-ID: and References: work even better.

Yes.  However, in my experience expecting the whole software ecosystem
to do things the Right Way is folly.  Ad-hoc solutions are at least as
common as the Right Thing, and yes, there are mailing infrastructures
that thread on subject lines.

> Hence [OpenPGP] should evolve.

No, it really shouldn't.  Leave RFC4880 alone, please, it's not an email
protocol.  Put this out in the email RFCs somewhere, like RFC3156.
RFC3156 describes how to use OpenPGP with MIME, but it doesn't actually
define anything about the OpenPGP standard itself.

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