From: solman@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 94 17:08:09 PDT
To: Blanc Weber <blancw@microsoft.com>
Subject: Re: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
In-Reply-To: <9408312143.AA04819@netmail2.microsoft.com>
Message-ID: <9409010008.AA07101@ua.MIT.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Blanc quoth:

> I'm not seeing the relationship of these two concepts of anonymity in 
> conjunction with reputation.
> 
> How could such attributes co-exist?
> Can they really function successfully together for both the agent & 
> their client:  how could one individual or escrow agent be both 
> unknowable and yet depend upon reputation capital to go on?  To have 
> reputation means that one's behavior from the past must be known & 
> evaluated for future interactions, but to be anonymous means that their 
> client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they is dealing:

People are using anonymity in a different way than has practical value
within cyberspace. Anonymity usually means that you can not match a
physical realm person to a cyberspatial private key. But that doesn't
mean you don't know anything about the entity. The skills of an entity
without any reputation capital are absolutely worthless. But usually an 
anonymous entity will come around brandishing all sorts of certifications 
(reputation capital).

So, as it is usually used, anonymity does not mean zero knowledge. It
means you lack knowledge that would enable you to match the key to the
physical realm person it corresponds to. With this in mind, the
coexistence of the aforementioned attributes ceases to be problematic.

JWS