Re: Restricted storage

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Thu, 01 Jun 2006 05:21:21 -0400,
"Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 2006-06-01 at 10:20 +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:
> > On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 08:23:53PM -0400, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> > > Indeed. And while we are about it: where do you propose to store keys
> > > that are used for group signatures?
> > 
> > In some place that cannot be destroyed by any of the members of the group, 
> > but
> > only by the group administrators.  That is, in a special user account 
> > created
> > specially for that group.
> 
> Ah. So you propose that the computational "right of assembly" should be
> present only with the consent of the system administrator?

Can you pelase define what you mean by "computational 'right of
assembly'"?  The term is entirely void of meaning to me.

> > > The objects holding such keys must be shared, and all parties need to be
> > > able to verify the storage safety and the identity (in the sense of "what
> > > binary is executing here") of the key management object.
> > 
> > Yes.  They can do that socially.
> 
> No. The entire point of the need to verify is that you *can't* do that
> socially, because you are forming a collaboration in which the parties
> do not have absolute trust in each other. Where absolute trust exists,
> no verification is necessary.
>
> I will note only that absolute trust has never been observed in the
> wild, and people have been looking for it since (at least) the beginning
> of recorded history. And I don't just mean computationally.

I don't know what "absolute trust" means.  But people trust other
people in ways that are much, much more important to them than
managing secret keys *all* the time.  Everyday, they put their very
life into the hands of dozens of strangers.  Just count the number of
cars that pass you by, and remember that it's just a flick of the
wrist for the driver to kill you.  "Trust" is nothing special, it's
just the personal belief of the correctness of something.

Two observations: It's totally ubiquitous, all over the place,
somebody who does not trust anybody at all would be pathologic and has
no chance to survive in a society with other human beings.  Second,
there is not a bit of a difference between the two systems in that
regard.  The difference is not that you have to exercise trust, but
about which agents you have to exercise it.  You happen to trust the
"trusted computing" component manufacturer, and you happen to have a
deep distrust against basically everybody else.  Well, for me, it is
the other way round, for the reasons explained in my posting
"ownership and contracts".

It's a simple error of logic to attribute "more trust", in general, to
the one system than to the other.  "Trust" is a personal conviction,
and can not be attributed to an object without a subject.

Thanks,
Marcus