Re: Transparent Email

[khijol!erc@cygnus.com (Ed Carp [Sysadmin])]

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> I think it's a bad idea to require signatures on the list, or even to 
> penalize people who don't use them.  People aren't signing their posts 
> because it's too much of a hassle to do it from a dial up, netcom style, 
> account, not because they're insufficiently committed to the cause.

Is it just me, or does this come up every few months?

> The real solution is to try to build tools which will make it so easy to 
> use crypto that there's simply no reason not to do it.

They are already there - in elm and pine, as well as many others.

> This leaves the problem of passphrases for outgoing signatures and
> automatically decrypting incoming mail, but I think that cfs will let me
> kludge something together which will get around this.  

No need to kludge anything.  Take a good look at the PGP docs - they will
let you do exactly what you want.

> (My situation is a little unusual, because I'm running linux on a pc which
> is connected to the net via a static slip account.  I don't think this
> would work well in other situations.)

I'm running Linux here, and have run it both as static/dynamic SLIP, and hung
(well!) off a T1 line.

> o	talked to the rest of the email universe without difficulty, and
> 	which uses standard unix software
> 
> o	would automatically use crypto when sending mail to a list
> 	of email addresses, and which could automatically handle
> 	incoming crypto
> 
> o	would be reasonably secure when it was powered off

This last one is really the only advantage to running cfs, IMO.

Here's the set of scripts I use here.  Others use more sophisticated ones, but
I'm not into shell programming ;}

pgpview will decrypt to the screen, vie will edit then encrypt, vis will edit
then sign.  They are intended to be used from within elm.

#! /bin/sh
#
# Created by shar, version 0.5 - 04/10/91
#
# This is a shell archive, meaning:
# 1. Remove everything about the #! /bin/sh line.
# 2. Save the resulting text in a file.
# 3. Execute the file with /bin/sh to create:
#
#        length  name
#        ------  -------------------------------------
#            28  pgpview
#           379  vie
#           199  vis
#

#
# Archive number 1
# This archive created Tue Nov 29 05:04:46 1994
#

echo "shar: extracting pgpview - (28 characters)"
if test -f 'pgpview' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file pgpview
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'pgpview'
Xpgp +batchmode -m | less -c
SHAR_EOF
if test 28 -ne "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file pgpview (should have been 28 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0823232194 pgpview
chmod 0755 pgpview

echo "shar: extracting vie - (379 characters)"
if test -f 'vie' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file vie
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vie'
X#
X# vie - like vi, but sign & encrypt with pgp
X#
Xsed -e 's/^> //g' $1 > $1.clr
X# why doesn't pgp $1 $1.clr work?  It should produce $1.clr... <sigh>
Xpgp +force $1.clr $1
Xsed -e 's/^/> /g' $1.clr > $1
X/bin/rm -f $1.clr
Xif [ "$EDITOR" == "" ] ; then
X	pico $1
Xelse
X	$EDITOR $1
Xfi
Xclear
XL=`logname`
Xif [ "$L" = "erc" ] ; then
X	L=ecarp
Xfi
Xpgp -seta +clearsig=on -u $L $1
Xmv $1.asc $1
SHAR_EOF
if test 379 -ne "`wc -c < 'vie'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vie (should have been 379 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vie'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0904203294 vie
chmod 0755 vie

echo "shar: extracting vis - (199 characters)"
if test -f 'vis' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file vis
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vis'
X#
X# vie - like vi, but sign with pgp
X#
Xif [ "$EDITOR" == "" ] ; then
X	pico $1
Xelse
X	$EDITOR $1
Xfi
Xclear
XL=`logname`
Xif [ "$L" = "erc" ] ; then
X	L=ecarp
Xfi
Xpgp -sta +clearsig=on -u $L $1
Xmv $1.asc $1
SHAR_EOF
if test 199 -ne "`wc -c < 'vis'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vis (should have been 199 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vis'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0801202294 vis
chmod 0755 vis
echo End of all shell archives
exit 0
- -- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com

Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
                       ** PGP encrypted email preferred! **

"What's the use of distant travel if only to discover - you're homeless in
your heart."  --Basia, "Yearning"

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