On 09/17/2017 08:34 AM, Paul Flint wrote: > Greetings Michael, > > I had a dream last night that somehow our Social Security Numbers became > public keys... and keeping the private key private became a really > important undertaking. As a Crypto-ignoramus, I thought to ask you > about the viability of such a scheme, which might involve additional > digits prefixed or suffixed to this Public Key SSN (PKSSN).
The idea that you can use centralized cabals to proxy identity and trust is a fantasy. After various major economic (and other) reboots it is apparent that we can't just redefine terms and wish hard enough and make reality go away. Perhaps we should design institutions that downplay the notion of an enduring identity. We could go back to local trust and local business cycles, but people seem to prefer higher growth rates (and risk). We may be able to leverage our modern communication media into a distributed notion of trust, but the verdict is not in. Meanwhile, people have rackets to run and the proxies have obtained legitimacy under law for the time being. -- Anthony Carrico
