Re: [BLUG] Meeting presentation idea: OpenPGP/Gnu Privacy Guard

Here are some things of note:

* The US Government admits that using unencrypted email is like sending
all your letters on postcards. There's no expectation of privacy, so
there's nothing wrong with reading them.

* To get the most out of encryption, you have to use it all the time.
If only use encryption for "sensitive" emails, then you've suddenly
indicated that (1) you have sensitive emails, and (2) these specific
emails contain all of the sensitive information.

* I've heard the military will actually send encrypted garbage back and
forth when they have nothing to say. This has two purposes, (1) the
person listening in has no idea when something important is being say
as the communication occurs regularly even when everyone knows nothing
interesting is happening, and (2) if they try to decrypt garbage, they
can't really get anywhere with it, regardless of how long they try or
the processing power available.

I think this is a great topic, personally.

Unfortunately, other life factors have prevented (and will probably
continue to prevent) my attending in the near future. (1. I'm trying to
buy a house, if I succeed, it will be quite busy. 2. My wife and I are
expecting our first in late December, presuming that goes well, things
will be somewhat hectic for a time.)

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 12:35:22PM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
> I'm sure this one has been considered several times, but I didn't see it
> in the previous meeting topics.
>
> I'm something of a privacy nut, and I think everyone with email should
> use GPG or equivalent. If it sounds like something the group would like,
> I'm willing to prepare a presentation on GPG. This would include a
> primer in RSA and asymmetric encryption, authentication vs encryption,
> web of trust/key signing, and some demonstrations of GPG in action.
>
> Anyone else interested?
>
> -Barry
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