Shouldn't we privilege protecting people from lies vs protecting people from the truth?
Publishing the DKIM keys makes both cases harder because you no longer have authenticity claims. Neither claim has authenticity value and instead is just a "their word versus yours" situation.
Humans are terrible moral adjudicators, and acting off of universals leads to repugnant ends. The truth can absolutely do terrible damage and still be the truth, but being the truth doesn't remove value from privacy. Put another way - would it be moral to publish your full medical records in the public? After all, they are the truth...
So far as I can tell this has never happened in history and logically neither blackmail nor public harm via exposure of sexual orientation particularly requires dkim verification.
It looks like you are asking us to give up DKIM verification which could and has aided us to verify politicians leaked emails in search of a purely hypothetical gain that may never materialize by suggesting that we both must and must not make moral determinations.
If you live in one of those countries and secretly a homosexual, do not send emails indicating that you're a homosexual.
You wouldn't tape your key to your front door.
Indeed! I couldn't have put it better myself.
Being able to say "no I didn't say that" is far more powerful than the reverse because the reverse has existed for thousands of years.
But being able to definitively prove that you did not say something is brand new and very powerful.
Do you send your social security number to people in emails?
Email has never been privileged communication and the problem isn't one of validation but one of not understanding one's level of privacy and risk. It uses relays without end-to-end encryption and there's no guarantee that what you sent is not totally out in the open.
If your doctor slips up and emails you about your AZT prescription, it doesn't matter how careful you were about not disclosing your HIV status over email you sent.
with criminal repercussions
Or better: don't use email and don't give an email address out to people who hold your secrets.
Not everyone is tech savvy. Not everyone understands encryption. Not everyone makes rational choices all the time.
Does that mean everybody should suffer the consequences of an arguably unintentional side effect of the technical implementation of DKIM?
> Does that mean everybody should suffer the consequences of an arguably unintentional side effect of the technical implementation of law?
Thankfully this is not law, but people should understand the things that can get them in serious trouble. A lot of legal concepts follow from basic principles and history.
Privacy concepts are the same way. It's simply not sufficient that we don't educate everyone about these things anymore. Ignorance isn't going to protect anyone from the fallout of misuse of technology.
The solution isn't to coddle people, it's to provide better technology that does the thing the way people intend to use it.
This is incorrect, because the things that someone can be blackmailed for is not the same as the set of immoral or unethical acts. You can be blackmailed for being gay, or for having a serious medical condition that's undisclosed. Neither of those situations is a "well just don't do that" kind of thing.
The defense against blackmail is to make blackmail difficult (eg release DKIM keys), severely punish people who engage in blackmail, and guard your secrets effectively.
> This is like saying don't lock your doors so that nobody can break and enter into your house.
This is like saying the latch on your fence is a security mechanism. Nobody intended that fence latch to keep your safe or secure and hiding behind it won't make you safer. Rip away the false pretense.