CDR: Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...

[Tim May]

At 1:25 PM -0500 11/20/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>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.

And I have been asserting for years that _belief_ is all that 
matters. Or, more carefully put, that all issues of lawyers, backing 
by gold, financial instruments, escrow, bonds, etc. are issues of 
"How is belief affected?"

One can think of many examples of where issues of identity, home 
address, name of lawyers, credit ratings, amount of a bond, etc. are 
really issues of belief in some outcome. One _believes_ that someone 
with a verifiable home and business address is more likely to be 
collected from (in a transaction or legal judgement) than someone 
with only a pseudonym. And one _believes_ that someone one has met 
is, for all intents and purposes, who he says he is (or, rather, that 
a key he represents to be his wills serve as adequate I.D. for future 
transactions.)

A financial bond, or guarantee, is only one aspect of belief. Perhaps 
an important one, but only a subset. Belief is all.

"All cryptography is about belief."

--Tim May
-- 
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)