Apparently it's so hard to use properly that even Snowden screwed it up in the course of communicating during his leaks.
> The frustrating and ironic thing about GPG is that even experts make mistakes with it. Even, as it turns out, Edward Snowden.
> I now had Poitras’ permission to send Snowden her encryption key, but in his first email to me, Snowden had forgotten to attach his key, which meant I could not encrypt my response. I had to send him an unencrypted email asking for his key first.
Re:GPG and Me
by lmm on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:14AM
(#9106097)
Any encryption system has to exchange keys, and you can do it easily or securely, pick one. Failing the way you describe makes things cumbersome but does not compromise security.
> The frustrating and ironic thing about GPG is that even experts make mistakes with it. Even, as it turns out, Edward Snowden.
> I now had Poitras’ permission to send Snowden her encryption key, but in his first email to me, Snowden had forgotten to attach his key, which meant I could not encrypt my response. I had to send him an unencrypted email asking for his key first.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/28/smuggling-snow...