Jonathan Rochkind said:
At 11:13 PM 01/23/96, Bruce Baugh wrote:
The nym signing is an idle thought of mine. I have a nym key which is, at the moment, signed only by itself. I know friends of mine have nym accounts. if we could assemble a group of folks whom I can trust enough to link the nym and myself, it'd be nice to add some more signatures to the nym key, and vice versa.
If, on the other hand, I sign "Toxic Avenger"'s key, then what benefit is this for third parties? Since Toxic Avenger is, by intention, _not_ linked to a real person, I'm not saying that I feel confident that this key really belongs to any particular real person. What am I saying?
That the key belongs to the person(s) assuming the identity of "Toxic Avenger". When someone signs my key, they are saying that they believe that the key belongs to me, a person who has the identity of "Kevin Prigge". Since I am a real person, I can prove that some other entity knows me as Kevin Prigge via some form of identification issued by the state, and I can prove that I control the key. For a 'nym, there is no identification that is issued, which may be the point of having an 'nym. The best that can be said is that the user@someplace posting with a 'nym of "whatever" controls the key, which is all I'd be certifying with my signature on the key. -- Kevin L. Prigge |"Have you ever gotten tired of hearing those UofM Central Computing | ridiculous AT&T commercials claiming credit email: klp@tc.umn.edu | for things that don't even exist yet? 010010011101011001100010| You will." -Emmanuel Goldstein