This page is no longer maintained.

Short story: go to my new website.

Longer story: I graduated in May 2007 and have started a position at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. My information page at NREL is found here.

My Key

Any signatures made will be done with the following keys.

pub   1024D/F3E97E1D 2005-02-16
uid                  David Alber 
sub   2048g/86F20184 2005-02-16 [expires: 2006-02-16]

Primary key fingerprint: DD31 0922 A2C5 065C 4663  C5D7 E746 7957 F3E9 7E1D

This document has been strongly based on the key signing policy of Wren Hunt, which is, in turn, strongly based on the policies of Marcus Frings.

Location

I live in Urbana, Illinois, and I am in my office in the Siebel Center (on the north end of the University of Illinois campus) most weekdays. If you would like to meet to have your key signed, locations near campus are most convenient for me, but I am willing to consider meeting elsewhere in the Champaign-Urbana area.

Requirements to Receive My Signature

This section has been divided into four phases:

1. What a signee needs to do prior to meeting with me.
2. What happens when I meet with a signee.
3. What a signee needs to do following the meeting.
4. Final wrap-up.

Before Meeting

The key of the signee must available on a public keyserver. Many public keyservers are available, and most of the keyservers are synchronized with one another. Two possible choices are http://sks.keyserver.penguin.de/ and http://pgp.mit.edu/.

The Meeting

• The identity of the signee must be proven to me in person. The signee can do this by presenting themselves and at least one government issued photo identity card (such as a driver's license or passport). Two forms of identity are preferred. The name on the identity card must match the name in the key (i.e., no pseudonyms).
• When the signee meets me in person, they should bring a strip of paper containing a printout (or neatly written) copy of their key's fingerprint. In GnuPG, the fingerprint is returned by the command

  gpg --fingerprint 0x12345678

  where 0x12345678 is the key ID of the signee's key.

After the Meeting

I will first verify that the fingerprint given to me by the signee matches the key that I have received from a public keyserver. If the fingerprints match then I will attempt to verify that all of the user IDs (UIDs) in the signee's key are valid.

I will do this by sending an email encrypted with the signee's public key to the email addresses associated with UIDs in the signee's key. Each email will contain a (pseudo-)random string. Once the signee decrypts and sends the string back to me from each of the addresses, I will sign their UIDs.

If any of the UIDs fail the test, then the signing will be on hold until the problem is resolved.

I am currently leaning toward requiring all UIDs to be valid, so if the signee is unable to pass the test for a UID, then the problem will need to be resolved or that UID will need to be revoked before I will be willing to sign any of the UIDs.

Wrap-up

If all of the conditions above are met then I will be satisfied that the signee owns the key, UIDs in the key, and is properly identifying themselves in the key. With these conditions met, I will sign all of the UIDs in the signee's key.

I expect that all key signings will be bidirectional. That is, I expect to have my key signed by the signee, assuming that I am able to satisfy the signee's conditions. I will not go through this process if the other party has no intention of signing my key.