2 ms·

I value both privacy and accountability. How do you make both happen in the case of public workers, and if it can't be done, what's the proper balance?

• dredmorbius 9y ago
  Key quorums and escrow are an option. If a quorum of some m < n keys can be used to reconstruct a key, and those n keys are distributed amongst a set of generally trusted and coercion-resistant entities, then the option exists for a quorum to be formed under specific protocols which would make the relevant decrypting key available. In the case of PKI, there's the added twist that the sending party is encrypting to the recipient's public key. If no self-encrypted copy is retained, this means that an escrow policy on the sender need not make available any copies of messages sent -- say, a national legislator. The method would allow for accessing the messages received, however. (And if the received messages referenced the sent ones, you'd have that content as well.) Escrow could also be used for other purposes, such as allowing for key recovery, by the authorised keyholder, on appeal to the escrow authorities. Given the risks and challenges of key loss in a PKI crypto context, these are options which might be worth considering.