Here a punkly (?) site seems to suggest that trusting the government
is a reasonable policy.
The web of trust model can break very quickly if those you
trust in turn trust
everyone, regardless of their merit. A real world example
surfaced last
week. 6 Israeli soldiers were killed in the disputed
territory of North
Israel/Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah guerrillas. In return,
Isreal started
daily bombing runs over Lebanon, taking out power plants and
other
infrastructure targets. At nite, the Israeli government
warned all those living
in northern Israel to stay indoors and if possible
underground. Israel feared
that the Hezbollah would retaliate with missile strikes and
didn't want targets
roaming around on the streets.
You're probably asking yourself "so what?" Well, the
interesting part of this
story is where the missles came from. The missles the
Israeli's are afraid of
are American TOW missles (anti tank, but can make quite a
impact in urban
warfare). American and Israeli intelligence tracked a
shipment of several
hundred TOW missiles into Lebanon from Iran a few months
before.
Where did Iran get the TOW's? Remember the Iran/Contra
scandal? Well,
in the ordeal, the US gave several hundred TOW missiles to
Israel, who in
turn gave the missiles to Iran in return for US hostages.
That is the last
known shipment of TOW's into Iran. So 10 years later, Israeli
citizens are
hiding in their basements at nite, fearing a strike from a
missiles that they
gave to someone who in turn gave them to "the enemy". Ironic,
huh?
This problem exemplifies the problems you encounter when
dealing with a
web of trust model. You must actively monitor those to whom
you give your
trust, or it may bite you later. While dealing with large,
central companies
such as Verisign or the Post Office may be evil, at least
they're a known evil
entity. The option is the possibility of hundreds of evil
people running around
abusing your trust.
http://www.shmoo.com/
