Re: Signature Subpacket 10?

[Jon Callas <[e-mail]>]

On 30 Jun 2005, at 4:16 AM, Ian Grigg wrote:

> A little background.  This was added by the old
> PGP Inc company for commercial users so as to
> escrow email.  If a key had this subpacket, you
> would encrypt to that additional key as well.
>

Not precisely true. It's a way to have data access to any encrypted 
data.

> The notion was that it should go
> in the standard, but that was politically charged
> at the time - indeed Loius Freeh stood up in
> front of Congress and used this very feature as
> proof that it was possible to force all crypto
> programs to escrow messages for the FBI...
>

No. That's completely false. I have no idea where you heard that, but 
that's not at all true.

This is so false that the opposite is true. The FBI hated it because it 
was a completely voluntary system with easy workarounds. The FBI hated 
it, which is one of the amusing ironies about the thing.

> The compromise that was reached was that it
> not be documented in the standard.  I don't
> know if GPG implements it, or even if it the PGP
> line still includes it.  I think architecturally speaking,
> such a feature is better off in the proxy products,
> and layered over the top at the admin level
> rather than put in the tech.  I think it is relatively
> safe to ignore it.
>

It's part of PGP. It's also patented. US patent 6,314,190.

	Jon