Army signals security & "Clansmen" series radios

[Dave Howe]

> Always, and again. Does not the nature of the 'web of trust' encourage the
> recognition of the inherent weakness of all trust systems.
Yep - if only because it has few if any weaknessess that aren't shared by
every other trust system in one way or another - at some point, you have to
say "do I trust this person to tell me who to trust?"

> Your military background seems to have encouraged in you a belief that
there
> are people - superiors - who are to be trusted, but to the extent that you
> hold that view, I cannot share it.
In a military context, it tends to be appropriate - messages are likely to
go up and down the tree of authority, rather than directly from point to
point. one of the advantages of the Web of Trust model is that it will
happily accommodate this sort of structure - you just mark the top level key
as trusted to assign trust, and limit the depth to one.

> I find the top-down trust models inherently scary. They are distinctly not
> based upon trust but on the feeling of some sort of compulsion.
all trust models are to a greater or lesser extent top-down - PGP is even
explicitly so (you have your own key as trusted top-level, and you assign
trust that trickles down to other people's keys.

>'You will trust me' A soldier does what he does not because he trusts
>the officer, but because he bloody well just must.
In my opinion, most of military training is to try and get people to blindly
trust the tree structure above them, even if it leads to their own death.
why should crypto be exempt?

>It works as an equivalent to trust in all respects save that it just isn't
>trust. At its enlightened best it can be authority.
yep, as in the SSL model.