keys require a user-id

Peter Pentchev roam at ringlet.net
Fri May 15 21:33:11 CEST 2020


On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 07:07:40PM +0200, Stefan Claas wrote:
> Robert J. Hansen wrote:
>  
> > > We now have the situation that either parents or teachers, etc. can 
> > > choose between a software which allows UID-less public key 
> > > generation, for their minors / students, themselves...
> > 
> > They are free to use whatever identifier they like for a UID, even
> > just the key ID.  A UID-free certificate is in no way required for
> > user privacy.
> > 
> > You're being dishonest.  I hate to say that, but I believe it's true.
> > You insist on pretending that you're the only one concerned about
> > privacy and that UID-free certificates are necessary for privacy of
> > personally identifying information.  The reality is the UID system in
> > no way requires personally identifying information and everyone you're
> > accusing of not caring about privacy cares a great deal about it.
> > 
> > You're being dishonest.  Please stop.
> 
> Mind you, I have only asked that GnuPG should support the import and
> processing of UID-less public key blocks and did not requested that
> this should be a default behaviour in the key generation process.

And the answer has been given: because those blocks violate the OpenPGP
standard and, as I understand Robert J. Hansen (and I apologize to him
if I'm putting the wrong words into his mouth), his position is that
there is no reason for this violation to exist at all, there is no
reason for UID-less key blocks to exist at all, so GnuPG is quite right
in following the OpenPGP standard and not accepting them.

G'luck,
Peter

-- 
Peter Pentchev  roam at ringlet.net roam at debian.org pp at storpool.com
PGP key:        http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc
Key fingerprint 2EE7 A7A5 17FC 124C F115  C354 651E EFB0 2527 DF13
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/attachments/20200515/db505cc0/attachment.sig>


More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list