After building gabber-0.8.7-r3 and testing the gnupg components, I was never asked for a password for my key. I found this fix in the Debian bug tracking system. This has been changed in upstream cvs. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=146740
Created attachment 4307 [details, diff] Upstream fix from cvs
This is a problem with gnupg 1.0.7 . The fix for this has been around for a while on the gabber mailinglist, but gabber 0.8.8 should be around any day now (also fixing some other problems) according to Julian (gabber developer). So i suggest not fixing this and wait for the update.