Key signing and assurances at AUUG2004

[Ben Elliston]

During the AUUG2004 conference next week, I will be running a key
signing and assurance BOF.  At the BOF we will be verifying PGP/GnuPG
public keys and providing CAcert certification.  I'm posting a brief
outline of the BOF here so that attendees can come prepared.

Cheers, Ben


Why is this certification important? Well, it is how your public key
is tied to your actual identity.  A large gathering like AUUG2004 is
the perfect place to meet people and verify their identity.

To participate in the BOF, you will need to bring two pieces of strong
(ie government-issued) identification - this is usually a passport and
a driver's licence, or one of those and a birth certificate.

The requirements for each kind of certification are slightly different:

PGP/GnuPG key:
--------------

Before you come to the BOF, you will need to generate a key pair (if
you have not already done so) (e.g. gpg --gen-key).  You will need to
find the fingerprint of your key (e.g. gpg --fingerprint
me at mydomain.com); print out this information, print many copies on
slips of paper to hand out.  At the BOF, you can meet others, witness
their documents and collect their key fingerprints.

You probably want to put your public key somewhere that people can
access: on a web site, or in a public key server
(e.g. http://pgp.mit.edu/), so people can fetch it to verify it and
sign it.

CAcert:
-------

I would encourage people who might be interested in obtaining CAcert
assurance to bring two forms of government-issued ID to the
conference.  If you don't know what is meant by this, you might like
to attend my talk!  If you then decide that you don't wish to proceed,
then you can easily opt out.  It is important that you understand what
assurance entails.

You will also need to bring some photocopies of your primary IDs (the
hotel might get a bit annoyed at the requests to use their
photocopier!)

At the BOF you will be aiming to get a minimum of 50 assurance points.
If you can gain 100, you can become an assurer yourself. However,
please note that we will be giving emphasis to less experienced
assurers (so they can get their assurance experience up), and
inexperienced assurers can only allocate 10 points, so you may need as
many as 10 copies.

The plan is that we will set up some "shopfronts" with an assurer at
each table.  You can go and visit each assurer to gain their
assurance.  There will be at least three existing assurers present.
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