[Enigmail] Encrypt newsposts

[mailinglists]

Hi Robert,
>> my problem is that enigmail refuses to encrypt posts. Actively refuses.
>>     
> This is not an Enigmail defect, the same way that it's not a defect for
> a pistol to refuse to fire if the safety is on.  
I didn't think it was a defect, I thought enigmail was being overly
protective. My question is, how do I disable safety? I know what I am
doing and don't (always) want a tool protecting me from myself.
> As a few people here have already told you, it doesn't make sense to use
> asymmetric crypto to post encrypted messages to a newsgroup.
>   
Well, every once in a while, someone with more than 20 years experience
in the computer/programming field comes along and is pretty sure he
knows what he is doing ;-) And I think in my case it makes sense, but
perhaps you've got a better idea. See below.
> What you want to do is _incredibly_ niche -- in a dozen years of being
> active in the PGP world, this is the first time I've ever heard of it --
> and it's reasonable for Enigmail to not support incredibly niche uses.
>   
Oh perhaps its niche, but is it unreasonably for me to ask if there is
some switch to disable safety? It's not as if it isn't supported.
Instead my impression is that it is actively prohibited, IOW some safety
code was added, not some feature left out.
> I would suggest going a different route.  Tell us what your specific
> need is.  What do you wish to achieve?  There are probably better ways
> to do it than this.
>   
I would love to hear any ideas. Here is what I need. There is this small
software project with a handful of developers, testers and managers.
Currently we do all discussion via email, which is pretty cumbersome and
has its own problems. My idea was to set up a private news server with
access restrictions and SSL encrypting traffic to and from. But this
still leaves posts unencrypted on the server and on the clients as well,
which is unacceptable to the management. So my suggestion was to create
a shared group key and use thunderbird+enigmail to post to the news
server, just like we used email before. To my great surprise enigmail
refused to encrypt the posts.

I used that idea a couple of years back with success using MS-Outlook
Express and "hamster" as a news server, but Outlook is out of the
question here :)

Any ideas? Here are the requirements:
+ Find a better alternative for software and project discussions than
email. News would suit fine.
+ Support access control.
+ Don't leave news posts unencrypted on the server or anywhere else.
They should be decrypted on the fly, just like enigmail does.
+ Allow easy archiving of old posts.
+ Allow new members to read old posts, which rules out encryping mails
to a predefined set of keys, as the keys of potentially new members are
not known to the original poster.

Now it's not that we are developing some super secret weapon. It's just
that management, for once, is actually aware of and interested in using
encryption. I am pretty glad that there are managers that care about
things like that and I want to support that. Also, as they have
outsourced their entire IT-Administration (including backups but
excluding PGP keys of course), I can understand they do not want their
contractor to be able to snoop in our discussion.

Many thanks and regards

Hajo