Digital futures - the catastrophic edge

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

re: # parties != 1 knowing secrets

The secrets in cryptography are too long to be memorized.  Therefore,
some computer hardware will need to be the storage container.  Secure
containers for such secrets can be constructed at much less cost than
the value of having the secret escape.  Since secrets come in
different levels of value, so will containers.

Since the secrets are data, they can be backed up as well, with a
variety of redundancy mechanisms and social constraints.  One can use
encrypted data with human-recallable pass phrase (as PGP secret keys)
or secret sharing to multiple trustees, or a combination.

Eric