RE: [ga] test

["William X. Walsh" <william@dso.net>]

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On 05-Feb-2000 Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
> It wasn't supposed to be. That one escaped.

Could you explain that, Roland?

For testing I forwarded the email as is to a temp email account, and used
netscape to download it.

Indeed there was a message inside, that just said to ignore it.

But the point was to show what I had said earlier about why S/MIME certs are
not a good choice.  They are poorly implemented and the vast majority of email
client software does not support them.  Indeed, unless you are using Netscape
or Outlook (which you were using) or Outlook express or a recent version of
Eudora (unconfirmed personally) then S/MIME certs are not usable.

It would be fine if there was some external command line program that could be
used to cut and paste and then decrypt, sign, encrypt, etc, like PGP/GnuPG/etc
does, but until then, it really is not a viable option.  Versions of PGP/GnuPG
exist for nearly every hardware/OS combination, even the old amiga, and are
very easy to use, especially with a good instructional howto which could be
prepared.

Again, I am presuming this would ONLY be used to verify the authenticity of
emailed ballots.  Otherwise there is really no purpose to using PGP keys or
S/MIME certs.  If you mean client side certs for web based transaction, I would
oppose that on the grounds that it requires a user to use a web based system,
as previously noted.  Email is the bare minimum level for participation, and in
my opinion, we should stick to it.  This enables even interested parties in
third world countries who are getting their email via sporadic UUCP gateways to
participate.  (Yes there are still places where this is the only way).

- --
William X. Walsh <william@dso.net>
DSo Networks  http://dso.net/
Fax: 877-860-5412 or +1-559-851-9192
GPG/PGP Key at http://dso.net/wwalsh.gpg
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