X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies

[James A. Donald]

    --
From:  Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn at garlic.com>
> drastically improving the useability of the interface 
> to the trusted public key repositories could be viewed 
> as having two downsides 1) certification authorities 
> that haven't payed to have their public keys preloaded 
> can more easily join the club, 2) the pgp-like 
> scenario becames much easier, potentially drastically 
> reducing existing reliance on the 
> digital-certificate-only (and certification authority 
> only business process) digital-signed-operation model.

I would state the same thing differently:  That the 
revenue model is based on sprinkling holy water over 
communications, rather than actually providing security.

Hence the proposal to address phishing by providing 
higher priced grades of holy water.

Public keys are relevant to the problem of decentralized 
reputation management.  For relationship management, 
shared secrets are better.   At present, the only widely 
applied reputation management software is that possessed 
by Ebay - which uses centralized reputation management 
software, so that it can charge people a fee for making 
use of their own reputations, and thus has no inherent 
need or desire for public keys.

After all these years, we still do not have a good fit 
between the capabilities of the technology, the 
usability of the interface, and the problems people need 
solved. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     X1okruQ3BE+qbWjk1b7CgXMbsiKNhvf5oMKDgR71
     4cxizGKqHfxeifgKTUEvpkLYq7wSgzAckTy2yLzQ8



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