This post is the first in a new series covering some of the reasoning behind decisions made in my project to build end-to-end encryption for direct me

Key Transparency and the Right to be Forgotten

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2024-11-22 02:30:04

This post is the first in a new series covering some of the reasoning behind decisions made in my project to build end-to-end encryption for direct messages on the Fediverse.

Although the reasons for specific design decisions should be immediately obvious from reading the relevant specification (and if not, I consider that a bug in the specification), I believe writing about it less formally will improve the clarity behind the specific design decisions taken.

In the inaugural post for this series, I’d like to focus on how the Fedi-E2EE Public Key Directory specification aims to provide Key Transparency and an Authority-free PKI for the Fediverse without making GDPR compliance logically impossible.

For a clearer background, I recommend reading my blog post announcing the focused effort on a Public Key Directory, and then my update from August 2024.

How it accomplishes this is a little complicated: It involves Merkle trees, digital signatures, and a higher-level protocol of distinct actions that affect the state machine.

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