Guidelines for Key Signing Parties
Formal Keysigning
Help me create instructions for a Formal Keysigning to be held at the KWLUG meeting on Monday, 2 December 2013. The guidelines below may be a useful starting point.
Informal Keysigning
(transcluded from Informal Keysigning)
An Informal Keysigning is a way to exchange KeyIDs between people who already know each other, or trust each other well enough to accept a printed strip of paper listing the KeyID, UserIDs and key fingerprint.
This is a fingerprint strip created with the command gpg --fingerprint 0xD2CCE5EA
pub 1024D/D2CCE5EA 1999-06-24
Key fingerprint = 04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA
uid Bob Jonkman <bjonkman@sobac.com>
uid Bob Jonkman <bob@jonkman.ca>
uid Bob Jonkman's DH/DSS key
sub 2048g/1A237CC4 1999-06-24
The command gpg-key2ps 0xD2CCE5EA > fingerprint.ps will create a page full of fingerprint strips. gpg-key2ps is available in the Debian package signing-party.
The actual key signing doesn't need to be done at the same time the fingerprint strips are exchanged. But when you do sign the key ID 0xD2CCE5EA be sure that its key fingerprint is the same one on the fingerprint strip.
To sign the public key ID 0xD2CCE5EA with your default private key use the command:
gpg --sign-key 0xD2CCE5EA
At the prompt Really sign all user IDs? type Y -- it is unusual not to sign all User IDs.
See Also:
Other guidelines
How to hold a Key Signing Party by Bob Jonkman
A refutation of the need for government-issued ID (or any other kind of ID)
How To CryptoParty
Not only keysigning parties, but how to throw a party to teach/learn GnuPG, TOR, disk encryption, &c.
Key Signing Protocol by Jeffrey T. Hutzelman
Step-by-step instructions for the identity verification portion of a keysigning party, as held at the 72nd IETF meeting in Dublin (July 2008)
The Keysigning Party HOWTO by V. Alex Brennen
Detailed, in-depth explanation of why and how to hold a Keysigning Party
The comp.security.pgp FAQ by Arnoud Engelfriet and Wouter Slegers
A general FAQ on PGP (and GnuPG), with a section on How do I organize a key signing party?
Ubuntu Keysigning Party
Very specific (too specific?) instructions on how to prepare for a keysigning party
Other stuff
Need a phonetic alphabet to help read out key IDs and fingerprints?
