CDR: Phil Agre on "trusted" intermediaries (was Re: [RRE]notes and recommendations)

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 6:15 AM -0800 on 10/29/00, Phil Agre wrote:


> It is often held that Internet privacy problems will be eliminated by
> a new class of online third parties called "trusted intermediaries".
> The idea is that, instead of visiting Amazon.com directly, you would
> visit Trustme.com, and then you would go "through" that site to get to
> Amazon.  Now, this scheme can work at a basic level if Amazon doesn't
> have to know anything about it.  That's what Zero Knowledge Systems
> <http://www.zeroknowledge.com/> is doing.  But that only works if the
> relationship between the customer and the vendor is relatively simple.
> A third party that requires Amazon's cooperation, for example because
> of its distinctive interface for processing pseudonymous requests for
> sensitive personal information, seems much less plausible to me.  What
> company is going to allow an intermediary to get between it and its
> customers?  Amazon?  Bank of America?  It doesn't seem likely.  They'd
> have to worry that the intermediary would add its own services or take
> money to redirect the customer to competitors.  Those firms could feel
> compelled to cooperate with an intermediary if the intermediary became
> well-established, but if most online marketplaces become monopolies
> or near-monopolies then this isn't likely.  Trusted intermediaries
> are not an entirely useless idea.  But like most companies pioneering
> new technologies they will have to establish themselves niches in the
> short term before they can even understand the nature of the problem
> in the long term.

-- 
-----------------
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'