From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 1995 05:55:57 +0800
To: "David E. Smith" <dsmith@midwest.net>
Subject: Re: Proxy/Representation?
In-Reply-To: <199512281517.JAA13397@cdale1.midwest.net>
Message-ID: <199512281546.KAA09482@jekyll.piermont.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"David E. Smith" writes:
> The question is: how do the current software packages handle representatives
> and proxies for a given is-a-person?  Using PGP as an example, I can't sign
> a message with Helen's key.

Nor should you be able to, actually.

When you sign a document on behalf of another and have "Power of
Attorney" in the paper world, you sign your own name and indicate that
you are signing on behalf of another, as in "David Smith for Helen
Smith".

The right way to do this in the digital world, IMHO, is to have a
standard for "Power of Attorney" documents, and for the entity
receiving something signed in your key that should be signed in
another person's key to also see the digitally signed power of
attorney document. Then the entity can check the signature on the
power of attorney was in Helen's key, and that the signed key in that
document was the key that signed the document signed by the "attorney".

> I'm sure that this has already popped up, so I'll just ask for pointers.

Actually, I haven't seen it mentioned before -- its only a subset of
other problems, though, like transient keys signed by longer term
keys. There should be some standardization in formats to handle this.

Perry