PGP & GPG

Other OpenPGP Considerations 161

where owning this book is illegal and the law is enforced by

truncheon-bearing goons, you will even want to ask the ques-

tion quietly. OpenPGP is great for protecting yourself from

privacy violations by other civilians and for notifying you when

the government is violating your privacy. Once the gears of jus-

tice begin grinding, however, its protections drop.

Fake Keys

Because anyone can create an OpenPGP public key with any-

one’s name on it, annoying twits occasionally upload keys in

other people’s names. For example, if I search subkeys.pgp.net

for “George W. Bush” I find no fewer than seven keys with that

name. Several are for the email address president@whitehouse

.gov. If George W. used OpenPGP, we’d all ...