Hi all, this might be a totally stupid question, but I am gonna ask it anyway: I know it is not as sexy as end point encryption, but we could also concentrate on just filling the last gaps of a fully functional encryption on all hops (clientA->mailserverA->mailserverB-clientB). Recently, I get the feeling the maturity of mail-servers, DNS etc. could actually allow for a worldwide deployment of this. And current levels of spam and mass surveillance might be the trigger points needed to get that widely deployed if we fill in a few minor gaps. Today, basic client to server encryption is fairly trivial and already widely in use. And we could also work to get a predominant mail-server to mail-server encrypted connection for all nodes, using TLS and certs pinned for the domain read from DNS (or DNSSEC) or on first connect. That could probably raise the efforts for pervasive mail eavesdropping quite a bit. I know it is not as good as end-point to end-point encryption, and your mail server and the recipient's mail server would still need to be trusted systems, but it would be totally transparent for normal users (which PGP is not) and the effort to get this done and deploy this worldwide might be reasonable low. Plus it might have the added benefit of reducing spam as well. Just a thought. Tobias On 01/02/14 23:34, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 2/1/2014 3:18 PM, John C Klensin wrote: >> (1) Other than a probably-appropriate level of general paranoia, >> do we have >> any reason to believe that PGP (Symantec and/or GNUPG versions) >> has been >> sufficiently compromised to not provide a good defense against >> either >> pervasive surveillance or general snooping? > > > 1. It has demonstrated unacceptable usability for average users. > > 2. It does not protect the header or the envelope, to the extent > anyone cares about divulging the Subject or other message meta-data... > > 3. It's packaging in the body is ugly. (See #1) > > For sufficiently motivated and technical individuals, it's clear the > technology is extremely useful as a discrete capability. > > However any focus on PGP or S/MIME in their current forms will be a > distraction that well might seduce the IETF community into thinking > it's doing something useful for the Internet that actually isn't. > > d/ >