USENET newsreaders and cryptography: features/suggestions/questions

[Clifford A Adams]

Hello out there!

	The current version of strn (see below) contains a signature
verification command (control-V).  It looks for either a RIPEM or PGP
signature line and passes the article to the appropriate command for
verification.  (Strn leaves it up to the user to interpret the output
of the command.)

	I have a few questions/requests that I hope the cypherpunks
list can help me with:

	1.  Does anyone know if including code like
system("pgp -m foobar") might cause legal problems?  Strn doesn't
implement any cryptographic techniques.

	2.  What's the status on a USA-legal PGP (using RSAREF)?
I would like to greatly expand strn's cryptographic features, but I'd
rather not implement features that many of strn's users can't use.
(That includes me--I won't use PGP until/unless the legal issues are
 cleared up.)

	3.  It would be greatly convenient if someone would implement
a "verify signature only" switch for PGP.  Most of the applications I
would like to use don't involve data hiding--just signature verification.
I'm also lobbying the RIPEM author to include a similar feature.

	Also, if anyone has any comments or suggestions about
newsreader cryptographic features feel free to send mail.  I hope to
do some work later with things like remote reconfiguration, trusted
ratings, suggested reading lists, and the like.

				--Cliff

P.S.  Strn is about 10K lines of C code added to trn.  It is
(probably) just a few weeks away from a public beta test.  If anyone
really wants to test strn, let me know and I'll consider it.  More
information is also available via finger or mail.

-- 
Clifford A. Adams  caadams at polaris.unm.edu | USENET Interface Project:
457 Ash St. NE      Albuquerque, NM  87106 | Tools for advanced newsreading
STRN (Scan TRN) now in testing: trn 3.0 plus flexible newsgroup menus, fast
article scoring with score ordered display, and merged/virtual newsgroups.