Re: Senator Leahy's Public Key

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 1:16 AM 5/9/96, Eric Eden wrote:

>What if you needed to set up a key server for a mass base of customers...
>Obviously, authenticating them via e-mail would be difficult, verifying
>them in person would be harder.  Would there be any reasonable way to

"Verifying them in person" would, in fact, be essentially impossible. Few
sources of documentation mean much, in fact. Consider that I joined Intel
in 1974 and was never once asked for any form of identification...I just
showed up for work under my assumed name, Tim May, and no one was the
wiser.

Ask yourself this: Have you _ever_ really "verified" the identity of your
girlfriend, your friends, your co-workers? (I mean this not to pose an
existential riddle of no real significance, but to remind people how seldom
we ever actually try to verify that people are "really" who they say they
are.)

...
>pretend that the labor is not the deciding factor.  What would be the
>best way to verify the customers keys if you couldn't visit each
>customer in person?

Representatives from my ISP, got.net, have attended some of my
parties...and they _still_ don't know that I am _actually_ Irving J.
Schlublutz, temporarily masquerading as "Tim May."\

>For example, would a photo copy of a drivers license be enough?

For which purposes? DLs are notoriously easy to forge. I think $25 is the
going price. (And DLs which would fool people like us are probably doable
on any H-P color inkjet printer.)

My point in all this being that "proofs of identity" aren't all they're
cracked up to be.


--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."