At 12:10 PM -0500 on 11/20/00, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
If CAs included a financial guarantee of whatever it is they are asserting when they issue a certificate, then all these problems would go away.
Right. Like Ellison (and Metzger :-)) have said for years now, the only "assertions" worth making are financial ones. "Identity", biometric/meat, or otherwise, is only a proxy for asset protection anyway. I claim you can do this on the net without the current mystification of identity that exists in the financial system, using bearer asset cryptography, among other things, but that's another discussion altogether. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'