CDR: Re: identity-as-bits vs. identity-as-meat
R. A. Hettinga
rah at shipwright.com
Thu Nov 16 12:48:12 PST 2000
...which brings us to
http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/law/swire1/pscrypto.htm
Which is, mostly, based on Professor Peter Swire's opinion on the
cypherpunk "identity is bits" paradigm delivered at FC97, though apparently
edited some since then.
Not that I agree with him, at all, actually, but there are *lots* of twisty
bits in there to wrestle with.
Cheers,
RAH
At 11:14 AM -0800 on 11/16/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
> According to current law in all nations (as far as I know),
> identity is meat. One person has one identity, and the
> identity is persistent and lifelong. All law is based on
> this assumption.
>
> Emerging in this forum and elsewhere is a different assumption,
> which is that identity is bits. If an entity has Alice's key,
> then that entity is Alice. Alice's person may be a different
> person this time, but only if Alice's last person was stupid or
> careless. And in this case Alice is probably better off with
> a different person anyway. Your dealings with Alice are still
> bound by the same guarantees of trust that you've always had
> with Alice: the laws of mathematics and the steps of the protocols.
> Alice's reputation and interests are likely to have changed with
> the change in person, but that's okay.
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'
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