Subject: RE: unqualified topic - not solved yet.

From: Charles Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 12:16:34 +1000

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Bartoletti [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, 1 December 1999 11:35
To: Charles Moore; 'Stefan Santesson'; [email-masked]
Cc: David P. Kemp
Subject: RE: unqualified topic - not solved yet.

All,

At first, I didn't understand Charles' objection at all.  Other than
a philosophic objection to being treated as a "device", the "serialNumber"
seems to fulfill the intended purpose. 
cm> Not realy a philosophic objection, sematics are part of the information
transfer, if I expect that the semantics of the syntax assocaited with
serial number are "a device"  and you expect it to be a person, why would
you expect the information transfer to be complete or meaningfull. 
If sematics are not imporatnt then just use the syntax of DirectoryString...
I belive sematics are important to achiveing a sucessful transfer of
information...Overloading semantics has all the problems of versioning and
object reuse... My preference is to solve changing semantics and also syntax
by a explicit change....

 Indeed, I would like Charles to
elaborate just a bit on how the "wrong semantics" would now conflict
with the "right semantics" already in use.  Concrete examples if possible.

cm> I issue a cert to a machine ( under deligation policy rules) I want the
delegation to be controlled to a specific machine and make use of a machine
serail number... I place the serial number into the attraibute... Alll works
ok ( also belive that the semantics assocaited with "machine serial numebr
are uniqueness)...  Now all of a sudden I get one of these PKIX things that
has National ID  of a person in the same attribute... I apply my policy that
says that any certifiacte for a device must have a serial number and .....

While also swayed by Peter's "only unique-per-issuer" argument, there
are some subtle differences.  I can certainly go from one bank to another
and obtain a new "customer account number".  But however I change my state
of residence, each state expects my car (if it is the same car) to be
registered with the same VID (vehicleID) it always had, no exceptions.

Now, to my understanding, QCs dream of maintaining this same degree of
association to my ... me.  And so long as this QC contains only "soft"
references to "me", no real problem.  But when biometric elements are
included, it becomes quite a bit more like a chassis-stamped VehicleID,
and able to be "globalized" independent of the originally local intent.

But this is more a complaint about the QC-uniqueness concept per-se.
If you go with it, then "serialNumber" seems to hit the mark precisely;)

cm> Need to determine if serial number is the single attribute for
uniqueness ?, this would be a problem from my perspective, or it is for
determining uniquess when there are no other unique attribute....  The first
is a problem for a global QC the latter should meet the requirements as I
have seen them stated....

Comments?  

___tony___

Tony Bartoletti                                             LL
IOWA Center                                              LL LL
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory                LL LL LL
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