I have nothing to do with this project, but I think the answer to your question is no - you don&#x27;t have to re-write history. If the removed party had access to previous revisions signed with his key, they&#x27;re already &quot;compromised&quot; as far as security is concerned. Whether or not you rewrite history, he already has it.<p>The re-encryption they&#x27;re referring to is presumably just to protect future revisions (since you would ideally rotate all keys they had access to, git-secret or not, and publish new ones right away).