Paul said:
>Is [GPG/PGP/etc.] now more automated so that I simply need to insall
>it, select a few options and then forget about it?

There are packages that purport to do that, but I'm not in the habit
of using them so I don't know how well they work.

You'll have to type your passphrase fairly frequently since it isn't
prudent for the machine to store it. I don't see a way to avoid that
nuisance without either decreasing security or buying additional
hardware, like something you wear that communicates by radio to nearby
machines to sign things. There are other significant nuisances to
using cryptography, so a nice user interface would still help.

>If the GPG system is now like that...

No, it's just a command line tool like PGP.

>I know that PGP stands for "Pretty Good Privacy", but what does GPG
>stand for?

GNU Privacy Guard, but it's really a pun on PGP. It arose because the
person holding copyright on PGP transferred rights to it to a company
that was trying to make money off of it, and the GNU people disliked
the licensing details enough to make their own free version.

--
Tim Freeman tim@...
GPG public key fingerprint ECDF 46F8 3B80 BB9E 575D 7180 76DF FE00 34B1 5C78

[Thanks for the explanation. My take is still that it seems like a good idea
whose time has not yet come, in the sense that it still needs a more practical
method of implementation, fully integated into the hardware and software which
most people buy. Of course, I have also been negative about it because I do not
agree with the whole concept of privacy that most people have (ie. as some kind
of "right"). Still encryption and electronic signature authentication will be
very important for private transmission of intellectual property and
authentication of contracts and their stipulations even under my view of the way
that the world would best work. --Paul]