On 04/22/2014 06:11 PM, Peter Lebbing wrote: > In your example, you do not trust the two keys differently[1]. However, due > to a > technicality, you can't assign both the same ownertrust, because they would > add > up. I don't think this is a fundamental thing that changes the concept of > ownertrust, it is an unfortunate technicality. If GnuPG were somehow enhanced > that you could mark them as "this is the same person", you would assign both > "marginal" and benefit from certifications of either key. If it's that easily > fixed, it's not a fundamental issue in my book. > > Peter. > > [1] Although you might mistrust a key that's no longer considered secure by > current cracking standards. Again, not an issue with trust in the owner, but a > technicality.
I understand your argument, and i agree that this reflects a technical weakness in the GnuPG cryptographic certification mechanism based on what it knows about keys, and how it makes validity calculations. Did you see my two proposals at the end of my note about ways it could be improved if anyone has time and effort to put into it? the "same owner if both assert the same user ID" fix might be the least-fiddly one, which would catch a large fraction of the cases in question. But it still wouldn't cover circumstances where you know someone who has a "work key" and a "home key" where the User IDs are disjoint. What would you think about work key/home key distinctions? what if the work key was stored on a machine administered by the local sysadmin? Adding in a separate "person" concept to the gpg keystore seems much more fiddly and complex in terms of UI/UX, unless gpg is willing to commit to being a full contact manager (which i don't think it necessarily should be). So anyway, i think i generally agree with you that the concept itself should stay at "ownertrust", though i do have some concerns about the work/home split, where i can imagine different levels of care taken by the same person in different contexts (perhaps by enforced workplace policy, even). thanks for the discussion, --dkg
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