NAI pulls out the DMCA stick

contrary contrary at fastmail.fm
Fri May 24 07:11:25 PDT 2002


On Fri, 24 May 2002 17:13:18 +1200 (NZST), "Peter Gutmann"
<pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz> said:
> "contrary" <contrary at fastmail.fm> writes:
> 
> >As long as you obtain your S/MIME certificate from an apporved
> >CA, using an
> >approved payment method and appropriate identification.....
> 
> The only CA-issued certs I've ever used were free, and under a bogus
> name.
> Usually I just issue my own.  You really need to find a better strawman
> than
> this if you want to criticise S/MIME.
> 
> Peter.
> 
OK, likewise.  But I guess my point (if I had one) is that regardless
of technical, usage, privacy and trust issues there is also one of
linkage between a nym and meatspace.  
With pgp, it's easy to generate a new keypair, label or sign it anyway
I care to, and exchange and use it for a single interaction. 
Relatively easy.  (Joe Sixpack-'O-Bass-Ale) 
S/MIME certificates (by which I may just mean commercial CA's) seem
mostly directed at strong authentication for commerce, and lean heavily
toward linking to a credit card, driver's license number, or
credential.
This is a Good Thing for cryptography and for commerce, but not for
'nymity.  Also not for "undeclared privacy" which is privacy that   
occurs below the attention threshold and without the permission of the
censors. 
 


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  contrary at fastmail.fm

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