sign encrypted emails

[Peter Lebbing]

On 06/01/14 01:51, Hauke Laging wrote:
> Let me guess: Modifying the mail client so that it automatically removes 
> the word "not" would be illegitimate because for some strange reason 
> that would be "solving social problems by technical means"...

I guess it boils down to the point that I just don't see a use case.

I believe there are two scenario's you're treating:

- You wish to give significance to a mail being encrypted; this, for you,
changes the context of the contents. I disagree; I'd rather see it context-free
and unambiguous[1].

- You wish to catch noobs in the act when they forget to encrypt. I think secure
communications with noobs is impossible, so it doesn't help to plug a single
hole in the sieve[2].

The result is that I see no application for what you describe. At to that the
fact I find it a rather ugly kludge to sign a single message twice instead of
keeping all authenticated data inside the one signature, and you've lost me.

So I guess this discussion is indeed pretty much done.

HTH,

Peter.

[1] Hmmm, maybe we should define a formal e-mail language ;)
[2] I'm using noobs rather broadly here, since I think it takes a lot of
attention and rigour to secure communications.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at <http://digitalbrains.com/2012/openpgp-key-peter>