Key with no signing possibilities

[Janusz A. Urbanowiz]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 01:30:22PM +0100, Johan Wevers wrote:
> Peter Palfrader wrote:
> 
> >So there's no reason ever for a government to ask your signing key
> >from you.
> 
> Why would a government want a signing key? To forge messages from me? Most
> people I exchange confidential encrypted messages don't blindly trust my key
> but would ask questions if they get strange messages.
> 
> I'm much more worried that they want my encryption key. Once they have the
> signing key I revoke it, if they have the encryption key they can read all
> intercepted messages untill now and perhaps for some time, wether I revoke
> it or not. Some people have sent me confidantial messages encrypted to all
> keys they could find for me - even 2 keys that were revoked because they are
> compromised - becaue they didn't know what key to use from the 5 I have on
> keyservers... :-(

This is why there's option to disclose a message's symmetric session key.

Alex