GPG Key Signing

[Evan Leibovitch]

Jamon Camisso wrote:

> Elsewhere, Evan meet David, David meet Evan :)

Too late, already introduced. And Linuxcaffe is the home to the Drupal 
UG meetings.

> But really, what can we setup as a more permanent signing location/person?

It's my hope that the event that Christopher is suggesting does happen 
and, as I said, I'll do what I can to help. If we plan it enough in 
advance, we can get publicity in mainstream IT media as well as a number 
of internet event sites.

My suggestion, to get the biggest "bang" for the event, would be to 
combine the mechanics of signing and assurance with optional education 
on the issue (some topics could be as basic as "what is a cert" or  
"what are the benefits of signing and how do you do it" and "who do you 
trust"). This complements the mundane mechanical bits of signing keys, 
creating certificates, assuring people and adding them to webs of trust.

I believe that there is a large IT mainstream out there that is 
concerned about security, that is being sold overpriced (and 
deliberately obscured) bills of goods by Thawte and Verisign resellers. 
The knowledge that the software (such as GNUPG), the signings and even 
the certificates themselves can be had at no cost can be a very 
attractive draw that can bring new people to (and new awareness of) 
GTALUG and open source in general.

If this event succeeds (by some TBD metric of success), I would suggest 
making this a recurring but not-too-frequent thing at Linuxcaffe. The 
only problem there is (at least from what I recall) it's difficult to do 
formal presentations there without getting in the way of regular 
clientele. Also, I'm hesitant to suggest ongoing plans until we can 
demonstrate that a single event can succeed.

- Evan

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