Remove public key from keyserver (was: Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?)

[Leo Gaspard]

On 01/15/2018 08:13 AM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:>> Since you can never remove
>> anything from the public key server, You are
>> wondering if you can add something to it -- for
>> example, add another 100 of UIDs with other
>> people's real name and emails so people can not
>> find out which one is yours, and append another
>> 100 of digital signature so people get tired
>> before figure out which one is from valid user.
> 
> I rarely use language like this, but this time I think it's warranted:
> 
> This is a total dick move.  Don't do this.  You'll make yourself a lot
> of enemies, and if you pick the wrong real names and emails, some of
> those people are pretty damn good at figuring out what's going on.
> 
> Don't put real names and emails belonging to other people on your cert.
> It's *rude*.  If someone goes looking for "Robert J. Hansen
> <rjh at sixdemonbag.org>" I want them to see one cert is newest and I want
> them to use that one.  If you go about putting my name and email address
> on your cert, I'm going to get cross.
> 
> Again: this is a total dick move.  Don't do this.

That said, it raises the interesting question of revocation of data on
keyservers (and the associated legal issues in operating keyservers, as
the operator is supposed to comply with requests to remove
personally-identifiable information from it).

I was just thinking, would it be possible to have a tag (a UID with
special meaning, like “please-remove-me at srs-keyservers.net”?) for which
the signature would be verified by the keyserver, and that would cause
it to drop everything from its storage apart from this tag? This way the
“please remove me” tag would just naturally propagate across keyservers,
and all up-to-date-enough keyservers will drop all the data associated
with the key except the tag and the master public key (basically, the
strict minimum to check the said tag).

That said I guess ideas like this have already likely been discussed before?