Re: expediency and avoidance of politics

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:13 AM 11/25/1997 GMT, Adam Back wrote:
>It seems to me that the debate over CMR and it's more secure
>alternatives could easily be deferred to OpenPGPv2 with no
>compatibility issues.
>
>The way that CMR/ARR field is encoded in the draft is that it is a
>signature subpacket type.  Signature subpacket types are extensible;
>that is an implementation already has a defined method to safely
>ignore subpackets it does not understand.  This means that no one will
>experience compatibility problems if the experimental CMR subpacket is
>only implemented by PGP Inc.

I agree.  

We should probably mark Subpacket Type 10 as "reserved" or something.

Figuring out the semantics of the Critical Bit is going to be more complex.


>- it would allow more time for PGP Inc to get feed-back on this
>  controversial experimental feature from their customers as to how
>  CMR performs functionally in practice (I am expecting there will
>  be complaints about the lack of ergonomic recovery from forgotten
>  passphrases -- all files have to be re-encrypted), how the security
>  of the system holds up (how well companies are managing very
>  sensitive CMR master keys), and to gauge customers acceptance of the
>  feature politically.

>- it will give time for more secure competing proposals (such as local
>  escrow) to be developed for recovery from forgotten passphrases.

Yeah, Stealth is going to take some discussion, and OPv2 is probably
a good venue for it.

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639