META:Digital Signatures

[Andrew S Hall <ashall@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>]

Is there anyway for the list software to incorporate digital signatures
as  verifying the poster is a list member?

I know Tim posted a whistle-blowing trial balloon, and I have used my
anonymous acct to post here. It would be nice if the software used
digital signatures to verify list members regardless of their actual
origin of posting. Presumably the signature recognition base would be
seperate from the names base.

This is primarily directed to the Extropians mailing list, but overlaps
to cypherpunks. What I am considering is that a user could chose to
only accept digitally verified postings. That would eliminate noise
like subscription requests. It would also "verify" anonymous postings
as being from a "valid" (as in list member) source.

I know there are some problems such as maintaining anonymity, but I think
verifying would have some interesting and positive results. We could trade
HeX shares based on signatures, not names. That would eliminate the element
of personality (or some of it) contest. Some one who is considered persona
non gratia could redeem themselves with a series of high quality, but
anonymous posts.

A.


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