destroying PGP private keys (Re: Home Office response on Burden of Proof)

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 09:50 AM 8/8/1999 +0100, Pete Bentley wrote:

>At Sun, 08 Aug 1999 00:28:19 BST, Adam Back writes:
>>To destroy a private key you remove it from your key ring (pgp -kr)
>>and wipe the backup keyring (pgp -w secring.bak).  
>
>And get rid of all copies of it on backup tapes...
>
>Which raises a question. Say I get served with a decryption notice for
>messages encrypted with a PGP public key, and I claim that the
>corresponding private key and all its backups have been
>destroyed. Would the authorities have to take my word on the backup
>issue, or would they be entitled to seize all backup tapes to look for
>the key (allowing them to go on a fishing expedition for any other
>file).

As it stands, it's for you to *prove*.  Fail, and you're in trouble.  They
just sit back, they don't bother to go fishing.

The tricky thing, of course, is that however many empty floppies and backup
tapes you produce, it doesn't prove you don't have the key somewhere else.
There's always a somewhere else.

Thanks to Adam for the private key destruction procedure.  Can anyone
provide the corresponding answers for the Windows based PGP versions?

Regards,

Nicholas Bohm

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
Takeley, Bishop's Stortford CM22 6SX, UK

Phone		01279 871272	(+44 1279 871272)
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PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF