[Cryptography] Email and IM are ideal candidates for mix networks

[radix42 at gmail.com]

Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>One hypothesis that I would like to throw >out is that there is no point in accepting >encrypted email from someone who does >not have a key to encrypt the response.

I'd agree, as I was in just this position in the last week or so: I got a gpg encryped email from someone I had no key for, and I haven't cut or circulated one in a very long while (my bad, as it were, on the latter point). So what's the point in even getting a key from them at that point, after the fact? They ARE not many 'hops' away from me in a web of trust sense so far as knowing people in person, but without having keys exchanged ahead of time, its all moot. As I'm sure this list already knows. Just re-iterating the point made here in various ways that key exchange is THE big problem in all of this.

If we can usably crack that nut with 'house servers' on a dongle, we're most of the way there wrt secure email, IMNSHO.

Zooko's triangle, pet names...we have cracked the THEORY of secure naming, just not the big obstacle of key exchange. And I don't think the wider public was concerned/scared enough to care before Snowden. Let's hope they care long enough to adopt any viable solutions to the problem that might pop up in the wake of all this. The traffic on this list the past week is a very welcome thing.

-David Mercer

David Mercer
Portland, OR