On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:40:07PM +0200, Johan Wevers wrote: > On 10-06-2013 10:46, Henry Hertz Hobbit wrote: > > > Nobody but me uses my signatures on the stuff I > > deliver. It isn't because my keys aren't part of the WOT. It > > is because for what ever reason they want to complain like mad > > about Prism but then go to Facebook and broadcast their personal > > lives to the entire world. > > Privacy has much more to do with encryption than with signing. On the > contrary, when I sign a message it is much easier to prove, or at the > very least make it probable, that I wrote it, thus reducing my privacy.
Hmmm. I begin to think that "privacy" is another one of those words we should avoid because it is so vague. Encryption is about secrecy, which is a bit easier to define. I could argue that someone pretending to be me on email is an attack on my privacy and that signing my emails thus increases my privacy (if my correspondents accept my assertion that I don't send unsigned emails; if not, I might argue that it at worst doesn't change anything). Yes, let's get rid of "privacy" (the word). We can have secrecy, we can have verification of authorship, we can have several other properties I've forgotten just now, and they are all aspects of this misty thing called "privacy". Privacy itself is a set of social conventions: there are aspects of my life which it is right and proper for me to control, and it is wrong and improper for others to attempt to control them, because my society generally agrees that this is so and my government is (generally) willing to enforce laws codifying these norms. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mw...@iupui.edu Machines should not be friendly. Machines should be obedient.
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