On 15 Aug 96 06:19pm, Bill Cheek wrote to Joe Nicholson:
 BC> Aside from Policy4 which may or may not hold water for digital sigs,
 BC> what is your personal reason for being adamantly against it?  If it
 BC> validates a message as coming from one and only one identifiable
 BC> person, is that not in keeping with the highest traditions of
 BC> networking?
 Hmmm...
 If a certain sequence of characters is used to verify authorship in a public
 forum such as FIDO.SCANRADIO, that sequence would only be good for such a
 purpose one time. After that first use, anyone could use it to fake
 authorship.
 Therefore, such a sequence of characters would need to be changed each time
 it's used. The change would require that someone knew about the change
 beforehand. If everybody knew what the change was, it wouldn't verify
 authorship, as anybody could use the changed sequence to fake authorship.
 So, the changes could only be known to a few (say, the moderators). In that
 case, the sequence becomes a coded message, and illegal.
 So, such PGP signatures are either:
        A: Signature files with no meaning as part of the message, and
           therefore subject to signature rules; OR
        B: Coded messages, and illegal.
 As I see it.
Bill Funk:  Internet:  skypilot@starlink.com
	    ASCIi User Group: http://www.starlink.com:80/~ascii
... "The Force is strong with this one"  "No, he just needs a bath"
--- Via Silver Xpress V4.00 SW12853
---------------