Suggestions on open source email encryption?

[TechBear_Seattle]

Screw the phones and eavesdropping Big Brother. Any suggestions on an email or emailable data encryption app? Open source is preferred, so I can check that there are no government back doors.

[endarkenment]

1. PGP nt.

[democrat_patriot]

2. I would think nothing is safe.

That's just the paranoid in me. If it's open source the code has been thouroghly parsed by Big Brother.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. And by many others

The best answer today is PGP and use a HUGE key.

The cryptography community is very big on peer review of algorithms. If there were issues with the current ones in general use *someone* would have published/said something.

However, brute force attacks run on specially designed hardware could conceivably crack anything and not be generally known.

IIRC you can be forced to give up the key if served with a warrant.

[ljm2002]

4. A common misconception...

...is, that if it is open source, and therefore the spooks have had time to look at it, it is easier to crack.

In fact, the truth is just the opposite. If is not open source, then whoever has proprietary rights can put in a back door they can use anytime they want to. Furthermore, if it is not open source, then it has not been vetted by the vast army of good to great to brilliant minds out there who are into this stuff. And that means that flaws may go undiscovered, only to be found by hackers later.

These encryption algorithms depend on the properties of large prime numbers, and these properties are defined mathematically. Spooks have no more power than you or I over the laws of mathematics. A good open source encryption package is in fact one of the best options you have for protecting your email communications.

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. My points exactly n/t

[endarkenment]

7. Public key encryption (PGP) is 'good enough'

for normal purposes.

From what I have read the NSA gave up its fight several years ago to prevent widespread use of software encryption such as PGP - most likely because they recognized that they were not going to win the battle, and also because they had developed other ways to get at the information that they needed. What those 'other ways' are is pretty much anyone's guess. It most likely means that they have not found a way to abolish fundamental mathematical rules, or develop a computer able to render them meaningless. So I think that unless you have become a target of 'special interest' PGP is good enough to keep your email secret from echelon like systems.

[mrfrapp]

5. OpenPGP or GPG

OpenPGP.

http://www.openpgp.org/


GPG.

http://www.gnupg.org/


Both are compatible with PGP.