[CIMC-working] Re: [Keyservers] proposal

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Arc, all,

This is excellent work that is underway. The webs of trust that are formali=
zed by the GPG process may become very important -- if it's not already -=
- to Indymedia's work.

My point may especially be appreciated by anyone who's experienced any kind=
 of interference in the process of their reporting to Indymedia sites.=20

If authentication can be done bottom-up, and face-to-face, then I think we'=
ll be building the basis of real, secure, and authenticated speech for In=
dymedia reporting and communication.=20

While GPG is still rather technical and requires a learning curve, it's a s=
mart investment for anyone to make who cares about communication integrit=
y and is working for change.

I hope to be using GPG soon and making my public keys available through loc=
al-to-global chains of authentication.

Best to all -- thanx, Arc.


Chris Kaihatsu
(Chicago IMC)






-----Original Message-----
From: Arc <arc@indymedia.org>
To: keyservers@lists.indymedia.org
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 02:02:23 -0500=20
Subject: [Keyservers] proposal

Ok, since the attempted meetings failed, I'm just going to make this
proposal here.

I see the need for both a "keyserver" and a "keyring", both for
keys.indy to serve us internally and for it to serve other activist
groups, plus the webs of trust are very likely to cross borders many
times...

So here's the proposal.  We keep it being a keyserver, but we enable
"keyrings" within that server (simply by adding extra GnuPG keyrings,
other than the generic "public" one).  All keys which are sent to the
server go into the public keyring, but by some mechanism they can be
accepted as part of a specific keyring "ie, Indymedia".

I think, for now, we'll need to manage the keyring membership by hand -
that is, people we know are involved with Indymedia are moved over.  I
can setup a system via signed fingerprints/etc where "users" are keys in
the database and certain users are known to be keyring managers, those
users being able to sign the fingerprints of other keys etc etc.
Technicalities need to be worked out, but the point is this would create
the first free keyring service on the net.

Search can, by default, search "Everyone" but be limited via dropdown
box/etc to search just in a specific keyring.  This solves our searching
issue.  

What do you all think?






_________________________________________________
Why the US plans to bomb Iraq and not North Korea
http://wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/kor-o21.shtml