A safe text editor

[antispam06 at sent.at]

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012, at 23:02, Peter Lebbing wrote:
> On 09/09/12 22:04, antispam06 at sent.at wrote:
> > It's sad to see that Pretty Good Privacy is just about pretty good and
> > nothing more. People don't seem to care beyond playing 007.
> 
> Are you talking about how an encryption/signing tool is not a text
> editor??
> What's with the sudden demeaning criticism?

I just asked around about this issue. And all I get is people telling me
how their fav text editor can juggle with private keys too. Than I have
to ask some more questions and end up in the same point: they never
understood what safe meant. So they never bothered to take the word into
account. So for them it translates what text editor can do scripting
too.
 
> Peter.
> 
> PS: I must say I'm a bit surprised nobody here seems to know any good
> secret-text-editors. I just fail to see how this is a failure of OpenPGP
> or
> GnuPG. Or the people here.

In theory there is no issue with that PGP offers. Given I use the old
spy technique of dropping a message. This way I can use an embassy
computer. That is cut off from unauthorised physical access and has no
network connection. I can upload my message on a virgin piece of media.
And find some public toilet to hide it behind the plumbing. Someone
might find it by accident. But the encryption is so strong the message
is rather pointless.

The problem is with the user base. Let me check. Wikipedia says 1991 is
the year PGP was born. 1995 is the year Internet for the masses was
born. Some time later the 24/7 unlimited net connection became available
to the masses. Malware, OS bugs. Searching high and low and nobody I ask
has any idea of some basic tools that go hand in hand with such a strong
encryption tool. So there might be something in the high waters of the
20+ pages of Google search, but it might be labeled pre–alpha or be
unused for the past decade.

So how does one work safely with GPG with 2 to 10 copies levitating in
the cloud or on the hard drive? In theory one might just pull the
network cable out and boot into a second OS. In the same Imaginationland
people have been doing only art and phylosophy since 1960s when the
machines started to do all the phisical work for each to have food and
shelter for free.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not judgemental. Everybody with their own
fetishes. But I'm starting to see the futility in the search for
privacy.