Explanation of Electronic Proof of Life

6 December 2020 14:01

Opening Statements

This page serves to break down and explain my Electronic Proof of Life post for interested parties. The opening section makes several statements concerning including that my personal safety and security is not threatened and that relevant security devices remain under my control.

As of 23:09:56 on Friday 04 December 2020 GMT I, Adrian Paul Wilkinson, confirm that:
1. My personal I.T. infrastructure remains in my control and to the best of my knowledge has not been compromised.
2. All private encryption, seeds and access control devices remain under my exclusive control.
3. I am alive and my personal safety and security is not threatened.
4. I, nor any company or organisation that I may represent, have received any notices either formally or informally under The Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
5. I next plan to update this statement on or before 04/03/2021.

As a “thank you” and service to the local community, I offer free limited wireless internet access and therefore the above statement refers to potentially being considered a “telecommunications provider” as per Section 45 of the act. Anyone accessing the service is warned that Section 87 may also apply and that their use of the service gives me their explicit consent for data retention.

Caution

You should be aware that most Internet Service Providers specifically disallow offering such a service. I would like to thank the Directors at Zen Internet Ltd for kindly providing their written authorisation to allow this service.

Proof of Freshness

This document is only useful if it can be tied to a specific time and date, which is why timestamped publicly verifiable information needs to be provided, in this case I have provided three sources:

Latest Headlines from BBC News

rsstail -1 -p -n3 -N -u http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml

Latest Headlines from The Telegraph

rsstail -1 -p -n3 -N -u https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rss.xml

Latest Bitcoin Block Processed

curl –silent –fail –proto https –tlsv1.3 https://blockchain.info/latestblock]

In the example below, the hash refers to Bitcoin Block # 659977, which was the most recently processed at the time the statement was produced.

Latest Headlines from BBC News: [rsstail -1 -p -n3 -N -u http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml]
 Post-Brexit trade talks paused amid 'significant divergences'
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 20:26:37 GMT
 Joe Biden: Covid vaccination in US will not be mandatory
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 22:30:46 GMT
 Avonmouth explosion: Boy, 16, among four workers killed
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 20:47:59 GMT
Latest Headlines from The Telegraph [rsstail -1 -p -n3 -N -u https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rss.xml]
 How many coronavirus cases have there been in your area? Use our tool to find out
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 17:33:08 GMT
 UK Covid-19 cases and deaths: how the UK is coping with a second wave
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 17:30:22 GMT
 Friday evening news briefing: France's Brexit deal veto threat
 Fri, 04 Dec 2020 17:22:53 GMT
Latest Bitcoin Block Processed: [curl --silent --fail --proto https --tlsv1.3 https://blockchain.info/latestblock]
{"hash":"0000000000000000000a022afc88c7cdd6411b8b2e30fd656304332d58461363","time":1607121788,"block_index":0,"height":659977,"txIndexes":[]}
Current Time and Date: [date -R -u]
Fri, 04 Dec 2020 23:09:57 +0000

Signatory Details

Here you are being told who is going to sign this document, which in this case is just me. A notice is given highly suggesting that the information be independently verified and signposts towards four public key servers operated by different companies.

Adrian P Wilkinson / https://puffin.industries/
You can (and should) independently verify the fingerprint via https://keyserver.pgp.com,
http://keys.gnupg.net/, http://pgp.key-server.io/ or https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/
pub   rsa4096 2018-04-22 [SC]
      91C1ACB6656639EB8CF8C4460376BD47DB9490F3
uid           [ultimate] Adrian P Wilkinson [Puffin Industries] <____@puffin.org>
uid           [ultimate] Adrian P Wilkinson [Puffin Industries] <____@puffin.org>
uid           [ unknown] [jpeg image of size 21824]
sub   rsa4096 2018-04-22 [E]
sub   rsa4096 2018-04-22 [A]

RSA refers to the public key encryption system created by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in 1977. Although Rivest, Shamir and Aldeman authored the system independently, it was effectively the same as the system Clifford Cocks for Government Communications Headquarters in 1973 and shared with the National Security Agency, although this information was not known until it was declassified in 1997.

The “rsa4096” label indicates that it uses a 4,096 bit key that was created on 22nd April 2018. The SCEA flags refer to the intended usage of the key: signing, certifying, encrypting or authorising. The long string is the fingerprint of the key, which can be used for verification purposes.

PGP Signature

This final block is the “signature” that the person had (at the time of signing) the private key and passphrase in their control:

As this is only the signature segment, verification will fail; you’ll need to see the full unaltered statement for details.