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Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

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Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#451
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to have police put their blackmailing asses in the jail. Email is global. You and I are in privileged positions regarding access to capable law enforcement. We're also privileged with what our societies deems acceptable. We are the exception, not the rule. If you're only thinking about how it affects you and what remedies you would have, then you clearly aren't looking at the big picture.

I'm from Serbia, so no, I'm not really privileged with any of that as we've got oppressive regime in power, inefficient police used to look the other way on crimes, and fairly close-minded and conservative society. Of course, there are places where it's far worse, but I had fairly enough of shit happen to me so far in life (break-up of the country, years of war, living under UN sanctions, hyperinflation, working for…

I can't follow your argument. Above, you said -

>the solution is [...] to have police put their blackmailing asses in the jail.

But now, you're saying you don't have meaningful access to law enforcement (in this context). So, why did you suggest a solution you know isn't viable? I don't get it.

To my mind, you've just made a strong argument for publishing DKIM keys since you readily admit law enforcement cannot tackle the blackmail problem. Indeed, even in countries with "good" law enforcement, they can't reasonably tackle it since the blackmailers almost always come from overseas (or are un-traceable).

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#452
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're advocating a standard that hurts innocent people in favor of the provably guilty.

I have sympathy for the "provably guilty", as I've seen plenty of places and times where that group includes many noble and good individuals.

In this case, it seems calculated to allow someone to get away with lying to the public about meeting with and knowing nothing about deals with an executives of a foreign state-owned company that has been accused of bribing the US government and corruption.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you explain why you think that this is not a legitimate need to authenticate a document? Because it is not legitimate for a court to treat something that was not intentionally (ie, with something other than DKIM) signed as a signed contract. If one party did not sign that contract, a DKIM 'signature' doesn't change that. Conversely, if you have a argument that the document should be treated as a valid contract…

> Because it is not legitimate for a court to treat something that was not intentionally (ie, with something other than DKIM) signed as a signed contract. If one party did not sign that contract, a DKIM 'signature' doesn't change that. Conversely, if you have a argument that the document should be treated as a valid contract despite not having been signed, the lack of DKIM 'signature' is obviously irrelevant. Not leg…

> You're claiming that a document should not be treated as a valid contract if it has not been signed

No, I'm claiming that a document should not be treated as signed if it has not been signed. And drawing attention to (not "claiming") the fact that attaching^Whaving some third party such as Google attach a piece of networking metadata to it, does not constitute signing.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it is not legitimate for a court to treat something that was not intentionally (ie, with something other than DKIM) signed as a signed contract. If one party did not sign that contract, a DKIM 'signature' doesn't change that. Conversely, if you have a argument that the document should be treated as a valid contract despite not having been signed, the lack of DKIM 'signature' is obviously irrelevant. Not leg…

> You're claiming that a document should not be treated as a valid contract if it has not been signed No, I'm claiming that a document should not be treated as signed if it has not been signed. And drawing attention to ( not "claiming") the fact that attaching^Whaving some third party such as Google attach a piece of networking metadata to it, does not constitute signing.

> No, I'm claiming that a document should not be treated as signed if it has not been signed. And drawing attention to (not "claiming") the fact that attaching^Whaving some third party such as Google attach a piece of networking metadata to it, does not constitute signing.

It sounds like you think that a "signed document" carries some sort of significance that an "unsigned document" does not carry, other than the value of the signature as evidence of a contract. I'm not aware of any such significance, at least not in the context of Finnish legislation. Perhaps if we are emailing a draft of a contract back and forth, the signature on a document can be used to specify which version is the agreed-upon contract as opposed to draft. But a similar proof could be attained without a signature, for example by recording audio of a verbal agreement which specifies the agreed-upon version of the contract. The signature does not carry any special significance.

In any case, no, I do not think that a DKIM signature is comparable to a handwritten signature. I would rather compare DKIM signature to fingerprints on a physical document. You might say "I've never seen this piece of paper in my life!" to dispute the validity of a paper contract, but your fingerprints on that paper would constitute significant evidence against your statement. DKIM signature of an email could be used in the same fashion.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#455
post #82

I know threads change over time, and it's dangerous to write a comment in response to the perceived gestalt of an HN thread, but, I have to say, it's pretty wild reading a thread on this site arguing so strenuously against the premise of secure messaging. In messaging cryptography, non-repudiability has for almost 2 decades been considered a vulnerability, not a feature. The OTR protocol[1] takes the step of publishi…

Email fills a different niche than secure messaging protocols though. Email has come to be used much like mail, including for legal purposes. Non-repudiation is actually a useful feature for a lot of those use-cases.

Obviously the conflation of a bunch of different use-cases into this one protocol is a problem, but I don't know that just making email more secure is a solution.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't answer it. In which scenario Amazon would deny sending an email and you would be protected by DKIM?

> In which scenario Amazon would deny sending an email and you would be protected by DKIM? You want a specific scenario of a dispute between a vendor and a customer? Ok. Let's say I email Amazon's customer support to ask them if a specific order is going to incur customs fees, and the Amazon representative emails me back that the order is not going to incur customs fees. Then I make the order, and to my surprise, I d…

You can dispute that without DKIM.

How many disputes like that have been resolved with DKIM?

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's talking about the world moving away from google. We're talking about the world simply not having non-repudiation built into email. A sender of an email doesn't owe you non-repudiation as a feature. Sorry if you think otherwise. Senders can add non-repudiation as a feature if they want to, which satisfies your purchase receipt scenario.

> Nobody's talking about the world moving away from google. We're talking about the world simply not having non-repudiation built into email. A sender of an email doesn't owe you non-repudiation as a feature. Sorry if you think otherwise. Senders can add non-repudiation as a feature if they want to, which satisfies your purchase receipt scenario. Please explain to me how I can make Amazon (or any other webshop) add n…

You can't force their DKIM signatures to be good forever either. You're basing some sense of security on a cryptographic property that simply isn't true. Would the world be worse off if you couldn't rely on DKIM signatures indefinitely? I don't know, are we worse off? Because whether you accept it or not, that's the exact situation we're in now.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"with DKIM" is the part of your argument you've failed to back up. Yes, you have a counter-example that requires authenticated emails. You don't have one that requires authenticating emails with DKIM .

> "with DKIM" is the part of your argument you've failed to back up. Yes, you have a counter-example that requires authenticated emails. You don't have one that requires authenticating emails with DKIM. That's because we aren't discussing a proposal to switch from DKIM authentication to a different method of authentication. We're discussing a proposal to abandon the partial non-repudiation property that's accidentall…

I'd argue that we currently have that "nothing" and are just trying to be explicit about it.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this argument not equivalent to the much-derided “nothing to hide” or “ban encryption by law” arguments? The way to have transparency into politician’s communications is to require them by law to be made public, and to use law enforcement to make sure that this actually happens. It seems that relying on information going over email (as opposed to eg signal), and getting hacked (perhaps you want it all hacked,…

That’s a false equivocation. Private citizens having “nothing to hide” in their personal lives is disimilar to public officials having nothing to hide in relation to their official duties. Blackmail related to embarrassing sexual proclivities or anything like that is unfortunate, but kindly asking politicians to be transparent isn’t a realistic answer. Of course they will use official channels and be transparent abou…

> Private citizens having “nothing to hide” in their personal lives is disimilar to public officials having nothing to hide

"Everybody who uses Gmail" includes a lot more private citizens than public officials.

Re: Ok Google: please publish your DKIM secret keys

#460
post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is auto-disappearing messages. You are just not understanding. Evidence that used to exist no longer exists as hard evidence. It isn't "hidden"... everything is still there. With secure DKIM justice can be served. With public after the fact DKIM, a shady lawyer claims the message could have been forged. Would-be hard evidence no longer exists as it can be painted as possibly forged. Destroy: transitive verb: t…

You said - > By making the DKIM keys public, you are converting solid evidence of something that was said into something that was either really said, or someone else pretended that they said. Evidence was destroyed. > Destroy: transitive verb: to put out of existence. As the other commenter stated, nothing was destroyed. Nothing. The plausibility of a certain piece of evidence was called into question, but that's not…

A victim used to be able to prove they didn't send a message. A leaker used to be able to prove someone did send a message. Those evidentiary options no longer exist. They were destroyed when the DKIM keys were made public.

You're not very bright. Concede that.

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