From: adam@bwh.harvard.edu (Adam Shostack)
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 95 12:00:45 PDT
To: mfroomki@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Michael Froomkin)
Subject: Re: Certificates/Anonymity/Policy/True Names
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9508181423.A623131443-0100000@umiami.ir.miami.edu>
Message-ID: <9508181854.AA02742@joplin.harvard.edu>
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| I have a question which is of course purely hypothetical.

[Description of a certificate with no backing deleted.]

| Is there any reason why a person would want such a certificate?  In other 
| words, given that the recipient of a digital signature will easily be 
| able to check the value of the certificate (nil), won't the 
| transaction/communication be in all ways identical to one where there was 
| no certificate at all.  So is anything of value lost by prohibiting such 
| a certificate?

	I'll turn the question around, and ask, is anything of value
gained by prohibiting such a thing?  If not, why not let people pay
for worthless things, should people so desire?

	Does the Government have a duty to prevent us from wasting our
time or money?

	On another tack, I'll say, yes, there is something of value
lost, and that is the easy creation of pseudonyms.  Pseudonyms are
useful for the creation of a persistant, although untraceable
identity.  Having those identities in the certification tree is, I
suspect, as good a thing as the CA as a whole.  

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume