Subject: On the need for external assurance

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 1999 12:34:57 +0100

At 19:36 08/06/99 -0400, Stephen Kent wrote:

>In working on various aspects of "the PKI problem" for the last decade,
>many of us have found that it is very hard to create self-contained systems
>that operate independent of external assurances, and it may have just been
>a bad idea from the start.

I find this an intriguing statement, not because I disagree but I can't see
why anyone might think otherwise.

I may be missing something, but it seems to me that a self contained system
operating independently of external assurances is like a perfect
mathemtical model that bears no relationship to the real world -- i.e. it
has no practical value.

It seems to me that the external assurance must, by definition, come from
outside the system.  The challenge that I see, then, is to devise the
system to maximizes application of the external assurance while minimizing
any degradation of its strength (or reliability).

#g

------------
Graham Klyne
([email-masked])