key-signing for pseudonyms

[Jean-David Beyer]

Atom 'Smasher' wrote (in part):
[snip Zimmerman quote]
> 
> i agree with him on one level... but on another level it's precisely that
> "excessive analness" that makes the WOT so respected. if keysignings were
> routinely done in a casual and haphazard way, then the distributed trust
> model would quickly fall apart, or at least lose credibility.
> 
> i consider the WOT to be a great thing, but maybe it's just not for
> everyone... there are certainly groups of users that exist outside of the
> WOT and probably have no need for keysigning. there are also people who
> can just publish their fingerprint (or just key IDs) prominently and
> that's "good enough"....
> 
> if someone wants to use pgp without becoming part of the WOT, they can...
> which achieves a goal of "setting novice users free from the burden of
> understanding certification and trust models".
> 
> i don't think phil's comments will have too big an impact on my
> key-signing policy, which is still being drafted and may or may not be a
> formal (written) policy.

The WOT may be a grat thing and widely respected. But I have been trying 
to use PGP and now GnuPG (and even VeriSign's stuff) since about 1997, and 
while the software all works fine, I have exactly one signature on my key. 
None of my correspondents give a damn about security, though they talk 
paranoia they do nothing about it. So I can send encrypted e-mail from one 
e-mail account to another. I can sign my e-mails, though this annoys my 
correspondents who reject e-mails with attachments.

Until some miracle comes about that makes the general public more 
interested in an active way about e-mail privacy, I am just kidding myself 
about all this. And it makes me sad.

-- 
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