key question

[Mark H. Wood]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 06:44:25PM +0000, MFPA wrote:
> On Wednesday 3 March 2010 at 4:16:21 PM, you wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 03:53:27PM +0000, MFPA wrote:
> >> There are privacy issues, especially if user-ids on the key contain
> >> email addresses. In some cases, the authorities knowing an individual
> >> used encryption could be a problem.
> 
> > There are issues of tradecraft, then.  Using OpenPGP as a tool for
> > committing crimes is kind of stupid.
> 
> I was referring to the case where the individual was in a country that
> prohibited or restricted the use of strong encryption.

Yes, I thought that was what you meant.  If the state in which one
communicates prohibits encrypted communication, and one communicates
over an encrypted channel, then one has already committed one crime
(in the eyes of that state), whatever the content or purpose of the
communication may have been.

Were I the individual, I would think long and hard about using a tool
which would require me to defeat its features that create identity
labels (however false or information-poor) and carry them along with
the message.  I would be drawn toward tools whose methods carry no
identity data themselves.  You can't accidentally misuse a feature
that isn't there.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Friends don't let friends publish revisable-form documents.
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