From: "David E. Smith" <dsmith@midwest.net>
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 01:04:05 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: A funny story [noise]
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960322142245.00693c74@204.248.40.2>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 08:52 PM 3/21/96 PST, hoz@univel wrote:
>>... someone had left thier keys in the door lock. 
>> So being the good cypherpunk that I am I jumped out and grabbed the 
>>keys from the lock, then knocked on the window. The passenger rolled 
>>down the window and accepted the keys back. Much to my surprise the 
>>passenger was none other than Whitfield Diffie.
>
>Let me get this straight.  You performed a key exchange with
>Whitfield Diffie?  His keys were publicly available, and you 
>securely transferred them back again?  What a concept!

Weren't those his _private_ keys, though?  You probably shouldn't be able
to transfer those in a secure system.

ObCrypto: would the transfer of private keys be necessarily a good
thing?  Or would a transfer of "reputation" be a better idea?
Example: suppose, and this is _very_ hypothetical, that the President
of the U.S. has a PGP key.  (We can dream, eh?)  Would it be
wiser to transfer that key from one President to the next, or have
the President sign the President-elect's new key?  
(I'm stretching here - feel free to killfile me.)

dave



--- David Smith, Intellecutal Terrorist
http://www.midwest.net/scribers/dsmith/