How know who is a file encrypted for ?

[Dirk Traulsen]

Am 27 Feb 2008 um 13:23 hat David Shaw geschrieben:

> On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 06:55:28PM +0100, Dirk Traulsen wrote:
> > > >What I meant, was something like this mockup:
> > > ============== 
> > > >C:\>gpg --recipient-keys ENCRYPTED_FILE.gpg
> > > >gpg: file ENCRYPTED_FILE.gpg was encrypted to the following keys:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > i agree, and would welcome this as well,
> > 
> > Thanks. 
> > So at least three people think it would be a good addition.
> 
> Why?
> 
> I'm serious - what is the use case here?  How often do people need to
> list all recipients of a file? 

I want to list just some use cases, where you only need the recipients 
and not the encrypted file content. I'm sure there are many more.

1. control
Your coworker encrypted an important file and you want to control 
whether it has the correct set of recipient keys before sending or 
archiving it.

2. curiosity
You want to know who else is getting the information in the file 
because he is also able to decrypt the file (I know about hidden-
recipient.)

3. finding
You don't remember the exact name of the file. But you know it was 
encrypted to XYZ also.

4. sorting
You want to sort the encrypted files in an archive depending on the 
recipients.


> By the way:
>   gpg --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /dev/null the-file.gpg

Cool. This is an interesting possibility to nearly get what I asked 
for, but not very user friendly. I now have this excellent tip from 
you, but I think it would be nice to have a clearly named command which 
people can find in the manual. 
--list-recipients would be an excellent name, I think.
Ideally additionally in a --with-colons format for easier scripting.  

Dirk