German ct magazine postulates death of pgp encryption

[Ralph Seichter]

> Your positions to this ct approach?

The c't magazine is mostly well respected in Germany and the editors
have some valid points; the latest articles are by no means mindless
rants or PGP-bashing. The thought of letting PGP die as an e-mail
encryption mechanism for the "masses" (the non-tech-savvy average users)
and to have it replaced with something my mother could use is valid. The
c't editorial also clearly states that PGP works perfectly well and is
secure as long as keys are verified, but fake keys and people not
verifying fingerprints are a reality. Alice can't just send an e-mail to
Bob, she needs to acquire and verify Bob's public key first. Compare
this to transparent encryption like Apple's iMessage service uses and it
is not hard to answer which mechanism has better usability. I like and
use PGP like probably every subscriber on this mailing list, but the
number of people I can exchange PGP-encrypted data with is very low when
compared to the total number of my e-mail contacts.

-Ralph