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Humans
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Let's talk about e-mail encryption |
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Yes, I am a big fan of e-mail encryption for everyday folks. Some have argued that this makes it harder for law enforcement folks to catch terrorists and other criminals. Others argue "Why should I encrypt my e-mail; I have nothing to hide". Well, I'm happy for you. Personally, I'm a lot more comofrtable knowing that when I get into a discussion with my wife over where we want to go to dinner, the only folks privy to the discussion are Nancy and me. If we should ever decide to get kinky via e-mail, I'd really like to have confidence that our e-mail was private! If I'm ordering a book from Amazon, I'd like to be reasonably sure that my credit card information isn't going to become public knowledge. But the bottom line is, I like the idea of Joe Average using e-mail encryption because as Americans we are entitled to do so! There is no law making it illegal for us to conduct private discussions in private, so it is our legal right to do so. Thanks to the folks who developed packages like PGP (a commercial product) and GPG (free software), encryption software is easily available. Those of us forced to use Microsoft security nightmare products (like Outlook) can find plugins that add encryption technology to Outlook. Want to send encrypted e-mail to someone whose public key you don't have? Go to one of the public key servers (like cryptonomicon.mit.edu) and do a key search.
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