On Sat 2015-09-19 20:06:39 -0700, "Robert J. Hansen" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> * *Privacy* is a binary state: yes the message was private
> (encrypted), or no it was not.
> * *Authenticity*//is also a binary state: we are confident the message
> is authentic, or we are not.
> * *Identity* is also a binary state: we are confident it came from the
> specified person, or we are not.
The term "authenticity" usually refers to the provenance of something,
or to its origin, at least among the english-speakers i talk to. I
think the term "integrity" is a closer match to the question "has
something been tampered with or not?"
"authenticity" is also related to the term "authentication", which
refers to establishing someone's identity.
"privacy" is also multiply-defined: for example, for many people,
"privacy" refers to the ability to hide relationships and activity from
someone snooping -- OpenPGP doesn't provide any protection for this sort
of metadata. Confidentiality is a clearer, narrower word that more
accurately describes the sort of guarantees that OpenPGP tries to
provide.
The triad OpenPGP claims to offer for messages is:
* message confidentiality (could anyone else have read its contents?)
* message integrity (was it tampered with?)
* message authenticity (do we know for sure that it came from the
supposed sender?)
But OpenPGP systems (GnuPG in particular) also offer information ("User
ID validity") about the certificates that hold keying material as well
-- this is tied to the authenticity question, and we have not done a
great job of either:
(a) explaining how GnuPG understands and models User ID validity, and
(b) helping users to interact with GnuPG's User ID validity model to
make GnuPG better reflect the users' actual conception of which key
belongs to which person they correspond with.
It seems like GnuPG's upcoming work on TOFU might help with (b) at
least, if projects like enigmail can give it a good UI/UX shim.
Other representations of the keyring might also be helpful, as well as
integrating keyring management with the addressbook.
I'm glad we're having these sorts of discussions -- we need them! But i
think it smells like trouble to use the term "authentic" to mean
"integrity-protected" or the term "private" to mean "confidential".
--dkg
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