Easy GnuPG

Shell scripts to make GnuPG more accessible and easier to use

Track: Lightning Talks
Room: H.2215 (Ferrer)
Day: Saturday
Start: 12:00
End: 12:15

There are scads of options presented by GnuPG, which are all part of making it the flexible and powerful an encryption framework that it is. But it's extremely complicated to get started with, and that quite reasonably puts people off.

EasyGnuPG is a wrapper script that tries to simplify the process of using GnuPG. In order to simplify things, it is opinionated about the "right" way to use GnuPG.

The philosophic goals here are these:

Make GPG as easy to use as possible. The more people using strong encryption, the better for everyone. One of the big hang ups right now is that the GPG tools are difficult to use - more so than they strictly have to be.
Make the interface itself auditable. This is why this is presented as shell scripts rather than a web service or a GUI. If you're concerned about what egpg does, open up the files and read them, or have someone you trust read them.
Build a guide forward. The simplified interface provided here should be good to get started with, and with luck many users will find they never need anything beyond what egpg provides. If you find that you need to do something more, though, the goal is that you have a foundation to start with, and some direction on how to proceed.
Make it customizable. If it doesn't fit your workflow, adapt and extend it to fit your way of doing things. Share your extensions with the others too.