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Re: Question about PGP Signatures.



On Sun, Aug 15, 2004 at 11:58:56AM +0200, Magnus Therning wrote:
> Hmm, I don't quite follow your reasoning here. Why would export
> restrictions on encryption make it any more difficult for an MUA to
> support PGP/MIME?

I guess I need to make this plain: It's not my reasoning.

Some development teams have avoided the potentially murky area of
encryption software by not only not doing encryption internally, but
also not supporting the use of external programs to decrypt e-mail.

  http://www.uvm.edu/~ashawley/pine/faq/security.html#PGP

I have, in the past, come across more verbose versions of this
argument which indicate that in some localities, it may not be clear
what constitutes encryption software (i.e. code used to call external
encryption software might be considered encryption software).  Whether
you agree with their reasoning or not (I don't), I think their
decision is reasonable, under the "better safe than sorry" principle.

However, I heard rumors that recent versions of Pine (will?) have PGP
support, including PGP-MIME.  Don't have a clue if it's true, and
don't particularly care.  But given the number of people who still use
inline PGP, and who have no other choice, for one reason or another, I
think shrugging off inline PGP is a naive mistake.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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