Signed-Only Mails Considered Harmful
This got me thinking. I could make an argument that encrypted communication is harmful and signed but not encrypted is good. Philosophically, I favor openness and transparency and disapprove of keeping secrets and the insidious “plausible deniability”. If you’re tempted to keep what you’re doing secret, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it. And likewise if you think you might want to pretend in the future that you didn’t really do it.
Signing and not encrypting your communication indicates that you intend to stand by what you say, and that you don’t care who knows about it. That you’re proud of what you’re saying.
Now I realize that there are evil people in the world that might retaliate with violence against perfectly commendable communications, so it becomes necessary for perfectly commendable people to keep their perfectly commendable communications secret. And I understand that it would be better for those poor souls if we all encrypted all our communication all the time so theirs would not stick out. But keep in mind that the evil, violent people are the biggest keepers of secrets. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if openness and transparency and not plausible deniability were the norm, and secrets drew attention as exceptions?