From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 08:45:28 +0800
To: Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
Subject: Re: dbts: Cryptographic Dog Stocks, The Dirigible Biplane, and   Sending the Wizards Back to Menlo Park
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At 5:02 PM -0500 on 10/26/98, Vin McLellan wrote:


> 	(Or maybe, more to the point, we've been working in different
> dimensions.)

Right. Exactly. Attacking flatland from the third dimension has always been
my special curse. :-).

<Excellent visit to X.BlaBla Wonderland elided...>

I hope if I can be excused if I don't want to chase you down that
particular rabbit-hole anymore, Vin.

Sorry to disappoint, but there are *lots* of other, more qualified people
around to walk through *that* particular looking glass, to mix my metaphors
like a doormouse.  I'm interested in *lots* of other stuff besides the
traceability of "on-line" audit trails and mapping meatspace book-entry
transaction processing to the internet like so much financial shovelware.

I will, however say, once again, that you can have reputation in
cypherspace without any biometric "identity" whatsoever, modulo the
footprints we all leave when we do stuff anyway. I wrote a rather extended
rant about this a while ago, in November or so last year, and everyone on
these lists has seen it. (Some, unfortunately, more than once. :-).) Let me
know if you want to send it to you under separate cover, and, if memory
serves, it may even be on the old Shipwright site,
<http://www.shipwright.com>.


Anyway, if you'd like to talk to someone who'll take up the cudgel, you
might want to talk to folks like Carl Ellison and Perry Metzger, who just
did an entire session at the USENIX electronic commerce conference on just
this kind of stuff. They're much more, um, curioser and curioser about
key/identity orthogonality than I am. :-). I just assume what they more or
less prove, to my own satisfaction.

I think I've said all I care to on the subject. And watch out for the
little blue mushrooms. The visuals last for days...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

PS: I would note, by way of a plug, that the DCSB meeting next Tuesday will
probably be a *great* place to talk about this, as Dan Geer from CertCo
(speaking of the USENIX electronic commerce conference) will certainly be
talking about this kind of thing -- and other such fun stuff.

-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'