From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 09:21:03 -0800 (PST)
To: Huge Cajones Remailer <nobody@huge.cajones.com>
Subject: Re: Appropriate Topics for Cypherpunks
In-Reply-To: <199612132256.OAA19882@mailmasher.com>
Message-ID: <32B2E17E.504@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Huge Cajones Remailer wrote:
> At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote:[snip]
> We are talking about trust models.
> The reason that the Net is a fundamental threat to the established
> social order is that it will probably result in a worldwide change in
> trust models.  For one thing, we are now learning just how venal and
> corrupt the world leadership really is.  At the same time,
> cross-border relationships and trust are flourishing.
> The rise of anonymous identities raises the question of how we can
> "trust" somebody we have never met.  This immediately leads to the
> question of why we trust other people we haven't met, such as the
> President, or scientists, or whomever.  It turns out our reasons for
> "trusting" these people are not as solid as some of us once believed.

I'd like to take a chance on showing my ignorance, but, if I do learn
to trust an anonymous source on something-or-other, and then a forger
comes along and disrupts that, i.e., I can no longer tell in all cases
which is the old source and which is the bogus, that's a problem.

I think I could learn to trust any number of anon's, but will the future
technology be able to guarantee ID's as well as, say, looking at someone's
face whom I know, or talking to them on the phone?

[snip]