On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 07:16:17AM -0700, Allen wrote: > Given this, the real question is, /"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"/
Putting aside the fact that cryptographers aren't custodians of anything, it's all about social institutions. There are well-attended conferences, papers published online and in many journals, etcetera. So it's not so difficult for people who don't know anything about security and crypto to eventually figure out who does, in the process also learning who else knows who the experts are. For example, in the IETF there's an institutional structure that makes finding out who to ask relatively simple. Large corporations tend to have some experts in house, even if they are only expert in finding the real experts. We (society) have new experts joining the field, with very low barriers to entry (financial and political barriers to entry are minimal -- it's all about brain power), and diversity amongst the existing experts. There's no major personal gain to be had, besides fame, and too much diversity and openness for anyone to have a prayer of manipulating the field undetected for too long. When it comes to expertise in crypto, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes seems like a relatively simple problem. I'm sure it's much, much more difficult a problem for, say, police departments, financial organizations, intelligence organizations, etc... Nico -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
