Interesting article. Thanks for writing it up.

 I don't allow shared root keys on any production machines (i.e., fine in a lab or a home network, but not at work), so as I read the article I wondered what I'd need to do in order for a non-root account to make comprehensive backups. I'd have no object to two "backup" accounts having shared keys, so I suppose as long as the "backup" user on the client machine has read access to all important files, I'd be good to go.

Thanks again for taking the time to write this up.