>>>>> "Ivan" == Ivan Popov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Ivan> In that sense all national passports are "global
Ivan> identities". We lack such ones in the computer world.
Do you think it was an accident that Microsoft called its attempt to
monopolize authentication services "Passport"?
But think about it. A Coda token _is_ already a global identity in
the geographical sense. It allows you to enter and travel within a
Coda realm according to your identity.
Also note that national passports are _not_ identities in the sense
that a computer login is an identity. If you fake my passport, you
can travel from one country to another as me, but you will have a hard
time accessing my bank accounts or giving grades to my students. By
contrast, in most cases once you are authenticated on a system, you
get "all the honors and privileges appertaining to the degree" as my
high school diploma says.
I guess my meaning is that this is a hard problem, and we should be
very careful about analogies to "real world" contructs like passports
when talking about authentication on computer systems.
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