[Osaka]

It's all well and good adding support for new algorithms, and streamlining the UI. But still, access to the key servers are done over plaintext[1]. Which could allow an attacker to modify your request/response from the keyservers.

Am I correct in believing that this is a critical issue not to address?

[1] "Support for keyserver access over TLS is currently not available but will be added with one of the next point releases. " -- https://gnupg.org/faq/whats-new-in-2.1.html

[onlydnaq]

I don't believe that this is a critical issue. The PGP-trust model doesn't need you to trust neither the keyserver nor the connection to the keyserver. You are supposed to look at the actual key, and the actual signatures of the key to decide if you trust it.

Anyone can usually upload any key to the keyserver, so even if you use TLS that wouldn't make a difference from a security perspective.