At 8:26 AM -0800 2/15/00, John Doe Number Two wrote:
>in article v03130303b4ce69373560@[207.111.242.22], Tim May at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>wrote on 14/2/00 6:38 pm:
>
>>
>> Yet another wrongheaded interpretation of "trust." Insofar as key signings
>> go, political views are not important. Golda Meier could have signed the
>> Ayotallah Khomeini's key with complete equinimity. Think about it.
>>
><snip>
>
>> Somene seeing my name on the list of signatures attached to "Fidel Castro's
>> key" simply tells someone: "Tim May had some level of confidence that the
>> key belongs to someone that Tim thinks is Fidel Castro."
>>
>
>An excellent point. Unfortunately there are heavy PGP users out there who
>believe their signatures mean something more. They think a sig means 'I
>approve of you' rather than, 'I believe you say who you are'. Thus one
>finds people who will cancel a PGP sig they put on another's key when they
>are pissed off with that individual.
Yes, it's both depressing and unsurprising that so many people are so
clueless about the basic issues. I never spent a _lot_ of time worrying
about webs of trust and keysignings, as it was obvious to me at the very
first Cypherpunks gathering in 1992 (*) what the issues were. That it is so
unobvious to all of these journalists and pundits so many years later is
laughable.
(* We had a PGP 2.0 keysigning at that September 1992 gathering at the
Oakland home of Eric Hughes. PGP 2.0 had just been released a week or so
earlier, so there is every reason to believe that this was the first
large-scale key signing. Outside of the team of developers, that is. By the
way, there was no nonsense about bringing photo IDs and letters of approval
from local law enforcement. Fuck that noise.)
The fact that so many nominally-clued people still think key signings are
measures of approval goes a long way to explaining the current miasma. We
are "stuck" at the 1980 level of technology and what passes for Cypherpunks
excitement these days is hearing a spokesbimbo from VeriWhack describing
her company's plans to roll out 52 bits for its next release of
VeriWhackomatic 2.0. Feh.
--Tim May
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
