[48184] in Cypherpunks
Re: [local] Report on Portland Cpunks meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin L Prigge)
Fri Jan 26 15:54:55 1996
From: Kevin L Prigge <Kevin.L.Prigge-2@cis.umn.edu>
To: jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 14:34:09 -0600 (CST)
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <ad2be4eb00021004ee75@[132.162.233.188]> from "Jonathan Rochkind" at Jan 24, 96 01:33:33 pm
Jonathan Rochkind said:
>
> At 11:13 PM 01/23/96, Bruce Baugh wrote:
> >The nym signing is an idle thought of mine. I have a nym key which is, at
> >the moment, signed only by itself. I know friends of mine have nym accounts.
> >if we could assemble a group of folks whom I can trust enough to link the
> >nym and myself, it'd be nice to add some more signatures to the nym key, and
> >vice versa.
>
> If, on the other hand, I sign "Toxic Avenger"'s key, then what benefit is
> this for third parties? Since Toxic Avenger is, by intention, _not_ linked
> to a real person, I'm not saying that I feel confident that this key really
> belongs to any particular real person. What am I saying?
That the key belongs to the person(s) assuming the identity of
"Toxic Avenger". When someone signs my key, they are saying that
they believe that the key belongs to me, a person who has the
identity of "Kevin Prigge". Since I am a real person, I can
prove that some other entity knows me as Kevin Prigge via some form
of identification issued by the state, and I can prove that I
control the key. For a 'nym, there is no identification that is
issued, which may be the point of having an 'nym. The best that
can be said is that the user@someplace posting with a 'nym of
"whatever" controls the key, which is all I'd be certifying with
my signature on the key.
--
Kevin L. Prigge |"Have you ever gotten tired of hearing those
UofM Central Computing | ridiculous AT&T commercials claiming credit
email: klp@tc.umn.edu | for things that don't even exist yet?
010010011101011001100010| You will." -Emmanuel Goldstein
