On Jan 18, 2013, at 2:04 PM, Jeffrey Walton <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 12:29 PM, Warren Kumari <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jan 18, 2013, at 11:14 AM, ianG <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 17/01/13 05:21 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> To clarify:  I think everyone and everything should be identified by
>>>>> their public key,...
>>>> 
>>>> Would re-analyzing all this in a key-centric model rather than
>>>> a name-centric model offer any insight?  (key-centric meaning
>>>> that the key is the identity and "Dan" is an attribute of that
>>>> key; name-centric meaning that Dan is the identity and the key
>>>> is an attribute of that name)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Key-centric works up until a point.  It is certainly more elegant and more 
>>> secure in technical terms, but some assumptions tend to need to be 
>>> handwaved away to make it workable.
>>> 
>>> Primarily, storing the key and protecting it seems to result in the same 
>>> old mess -- it has to be stored somewhere safe and kept safe.
>> 
>> … and available.
>> 
>> When you are at one of the hotel "Print your boarding pass here" things here 
>> and suddenly need your United credentials, or are visiting your granny and 
>> sudden discover that the great stock tip that your barber gave you last week 
>> is not actually so great, and need your E-Trade credentials so you can use 
>> her machine to sell, well….
>> 
>> Sure, you can store them all in the "cloud" and protect them with… err… a 
>> username and password and then just download the ones you need and import 
>> them and…
>> Oh, and this needs to be usable by the sort of folk who need help plugging 
>> in a USB cable…
> Dangerous.
> 

Oh, no doubt… 

> When the US government started its illegal wiretapping campaign, I
> understand only one telecom resisted. Here, information was being
> provided upon request and not by court order. Will any cloud providers
> resist?

Ah, I guess I was not clear -- the keys would be encrypted *with your password* 
somewhere -- "the cloud" was shorthand for "somewhere easily and universally 
reachable".

They would only be decrypted on a local machine (like, you know, the untrusted 
kiosk!)
Yes, this reduces the entire solution to a password ;-)

I guess I hadn't selected the sarcasm font when writing this...

> 
> Before someone gets upset, I've been in meetings where folks gasped
> when I claimed we should model government as a threat.

Well, duh… Isn't basically everything that is not yourself a threat?

> When I asked if
> its OK for the DoD or an Army analyst to read/analyze State Department
> or Diplomatice Security Service traffic, the answer was NO. I took
> that to mean they wanted privacy from all parties (including other
> agencies), but did not know how to ask for it (and I did not frame it
> properly).
> 
W

> Jeff
> 

-- 
Eagles soar but a weasel will never get sucked into a jet engine 


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