SPKI's CRC (was Re: New Policy: a Labour Party U-turn)

[Carl Ellison]

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At 12:50 PM 4/28/98 +0100, Richard Watts wrote:
> Actually, I think you can probably do it :
>
> 1. Where a signature is not covered by the certificate of an
>Approved Service Provider, it may not be used as evidence of the
>existence of a contract, or of the identity of the signature 
>owner.

At the risk of treating satire seriously, ... :)

SPKI's CRC requires that the user of the CRC have authorized the issuer of 
the CRC to delegate authorization to other keys.  The subject key, in a CRC, 
belongs to a keyholder completely unknown to the signer of the CRC.  The 
certificates by which that subject was introduced to the CRC issuer are 
hidden in the process, so the issuer of the CRC is being trusted to vouch 
correctly for the subject.

In other words, this looks exactly like any other certificate...only there's 
no contact between issuer and subject from which one might derive tracking 
information, private keys, etc.

Of course, identity of the signature owner (the keyholder) is rarely at 
issue since names are generally useless.  Rather, the CRC will convey that 
portion of Identity that is at issue: permission to perform some action or 
demand some action.

 - Carl

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