Re: Netscape as vehicle for cypherpunk agenda/the cypherpunk bully pulpit

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 10:40 AM 9/25/95 -0700, sameer <sameer@c2.org> wrote:
>	The really big sticking point I see, however, is the
>certification authorities. There is a single point of failure here and
>that is at Verisign. This becomes a large problem I think if the en
>rypted email that Netscape does requires personal x509 certificates (I
>read that Versign is issuing those for $9/each.) This is a problem
>because for one thing I don't think Versign will want to issue certs
>to psudonyms, and Netscape may not talk encrypted email to
>non-certified people. (I am not sure)

Verisign has a range of certificate types; a "Type I", which only
promises that the userid is unique and is otherwise unverified,
is free for non-commercial users and something like $6 for commercial;
Types II and III require various levels of documentation and $$ to get.
The www.verisign.com home page didn't exactly say how to get one;
I gather the answer is "wait for October" or "Use the next Netscape
version", where I'm don't remember if that's 1.2.2 or 2.0.

Netscape is being modified to accept non-Verisign CAs, which means
we _can_ build a web of trust to take advantage of it, using
X.509 certs or a hybrid of X.509 and PGP.
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# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
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