I am testing the code from fglock's link. Interesting, I am able to run shell commands and confirmed the cgi definitely is coming in with my id and current dir, yet even though I have a .gnupg directory (not in current dir though) I get "gpg: fatal: ~/.gnupg: can't create directory: No such file or directory" when trying --list-keys.

Also it isn't possible to generate a key fwiw due to lack of entropy (never had that problem before. ;|

Update:..which error is solved by adding $ENV{"GNUPGHOME"}="/home/www/myusername/.gnupg"; thanks to this googled link.

That thread inspired me to try GnuPG::Interface which is the successor to PGP::GPG::MessageProcessor which is discussed there.