Re: [openpgp] Proposal for a separable ring signature scheme compatible with RSA, DSA, and ECDSA keys

[Jon Callas <[e-mail]>]

On Mar 15, 2014, at 1:40 PM, Nicholas Cole <[e-mail]> wrote:

> And thinking about it even further, it compounds a problem that
> someone (was it you, Jon?) has written about in the past.  Even though
> we all know that key UIDs can be signed by complete strangers, users
> are *often* disconcerted by this fact (which is why there is a
> no-modifier flag, even if keyservers have never respected it and even
> if it would make the use of OpenPGP even more complicated).  Still, a
> naive user of an OpenPGP program may draw incorrect inferences about
> social relationships from UID signatures.  Imagine the outcry of users
> if they discovered that documents were in the wild that 'might' have
> been signed by them...

Yes, I'm probably the person. I created the no-modify and other properties of 2440 and 4880 precisely because it was something that I saw as a barrier to OpenPGP adoption and a personal peeve of mine. (Also, at an IETF meeting that happened to be on April First, I did an April Fools OpenPGP presentation where I presented the anti-identity signature, whereby if enough people over a threshold signed an anti-identity signature, you'd lose your identity and they could give it to someone else. That was also an expression of my peeve in this space.)

	Jon